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What is the point - Frustrated AL CO


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Looking at it from a COs perspective - What is the point of Ad Labs ?

 

Please note this is not a dig at Ad Labs - they are enjoyable and can be very informative. This is all about the aspect of ownership being in comparison to other 'types'

 

As a CO -

* You do not get notifications that someone has completed your Ad Lab

* You can not see who has logged the Ad Lab (if you have more than 10 completions the name of any further cacher who completes is not known - that is unless they complete the 'log', which only 10% of those that have done my Lab have done so) 

* You can not delete spurious logs 

* The only facility to be able to see who has partially or fully completed the Labs has been removed (the facility to download player statistics has been removed - but this information is all on the page anyway so thre is no need for an additional download) 

* With answers and codes being published on facebook of several Adventure labs around the world all of which are being logged remotely - as a CO we can do nothing about it 

 

These issues have not been addressed and yet more new ones are being pumped out 
I am aware of COs of current Labs getting very despondent at the lack of CO capability and the lack of ability to maintain them that they are considering or have removed their Lab from the system 

These have been out for some time now - why has there been little progress with these sorts of issues 

Edited by Deepdiggingmole
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1 hour ago, Deepdiggingmole said:

Looking at it from a COs perspective - What is the point of Ad Labs ?

 

As a CO -

* You do not get notifications that someone has completed your Ad Lab

* You can not see who has logged the Ad Lab (if you have more than 10 completions the name of any further cacher who completes is not known - that is unless they complete the 'log', which only 10% of those that have done my Lab have done so) 

* You can not delete spurious logs 

* The only facility to be able to see who has partially or fully completed the Labs has been removed (the facility to download player statistics has been removed) 

* With answers and codes being published on facebook of several Adventure labs around the world all of which are being logged remotely - as a CO we can do nothing about it 

 

These issues have not been addressed and yet more new ones are being pumped out 
I am aware of COs of current Labs getting very despondent at the lack of CO capability and the lack of ability to maintain them that they are considering or have removed their Lab from the system 

These have been out for some time now - why has there been little progress with these sorts of issues 

 

How discouraging!  I was excited when I got an email from HQ in late March that I received an Adventure Lab credit!  I'm disappointed that I will have to wait till the current pandemic eases up to get out and actually plan it, but I can work on ideas while here at home.  I'm looking forward to putting it all together!  Now this wet blanket on the whole thing....

 

The ones I have done locally seem to be accepted very well by the local community - I'm not aware of bogus (remote) logs - people who have completed seem to write about their experience for the rest of us to read (only 10% of yours have logs?!) and I am happy to have a credit to get creative!

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1 hour ago, CAVinoGal said:

 

How discouraging!  I was excited when I got an email from HQ in late March that I received an Adventure Lab credit!  I'm disappointed that I will have to wait till the current pandemic eases up to get out and actually plan it, but I can work on ideas while here at home.  I'm looking forward to putting it all together!  Now this wet blanket on the whole thing....

 

The ones I have done locally seem to be accepted very well by the local community - I'm not aware of bogus (remote) logs - people who have completed seem to write about their experience for the rest of us to read (only 10% of yours have logs?!) and I am happy to have a credit to get creative!

Dont get me wrong  - doing them is fun and it is evident a lot of effort is put in by the AL COs and the Ad Labs are well recieved by the cachers that do them - but as a CO....... repeat above :-) 

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3 hours ago, Deepdiggingmole said:

These have been out for some time now - why has there been little progress with these sorts of issues 

 

I understand your point very well but I suggest to remove all remaining statistics from Ad Labs. When you don't know something it doesn't matter. Those who really want to enjoy your Ad Lab cache will do it anyway. Why do you care about others?

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13 minutes ago, arisoft said:

 

I understand your point very well but I suggest to remove all remaining statistics from Ad Labs. When you don't know something it doesn't matter. Those who really want to enjoy your Ad Lab cache will do it anyway. Why do you care about others?

 

I am interested in the stats of my own lab cache and in particular the downloadable finder stats - which as a CO was the only way I could see who has found my Ad lab 
As a CO of a physical cache, a traditional cache for example - I am required to ensure integrity of that cache as part of the maintenance regime - thus I would check the signatures in the log book against the online logs and would challenge any spurious logs - very few COs as we all know do this.
I own a webcam cache now a rarity and have no intention in losing it and so I ensure logs are accompanied by the required webcam image capture rather than a selfie for example - failure to do this could result in my cache being archived for lack of proper maintenance by the CO.
So I would like to think that similar is asked of the CO of an adventure Lab. The first 4 finders of mine did so remotely from other parts of the world - as a CO I would like to be able to delete those - I cant. (I was however able to get all 4 of those cachers to delete their finds with a pleasant and carefully worded email) 
It is evident that many lab caches are found 'remotely' and moreso since many of them are now published on the FB site (which incidently has now posted over 170,000 TB codes !!!)  so again as a CO it would be nice to know who the finders of the Ad lab caches are and deal with any spurious finders 

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5 hours ago, Deepdiggingmole said:

These issues have not been addressed and yet more new ones are being pumped out 

I am aware of COs of current Labs getting very despondent at the lack of CO capability and the lack of ability to maintain them that they are considering or have removed their Lab from the system 


These have been out for some time now - why has there been little progress with these sorts of issues 

 

It tooks over a year but they finally removed the beta banner from the app icon with the new version. The integrated map for every lab adventure location is still missing months after it was promised on the podcast....

 

Perso on my adventure labs I still have low numbers so it doesn't seem to have cheater yet but I know it will come. I have 5 completed and 3 have left comment.

 

Other things that are missing for the lab caches are no proximity rules (I have 2 duplicates in my area) and no reviewing process to make sure the guidelines are respected.

 

I would also like they stop to add more players because my area is flooded with adventures labs (95 published in my province and more to come). They were special and hard to get before but not anymore.

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21 minutes ago, baer2006 said:

Feedback about who plays my ALC. Is is too much for me as a CO (Lab cache or otherwise) to get some info about who is finding (or claiming to have found it) my cache? If similar rule changes were applied to "normal" caches, i.e. you can claim a find without any feedback whatsoever to the CO, I'd archive my listings the next day.

 

Normal caches have logbook. I can not see enough relation between geocaching and adventuring to be able to use analogies between them.

 

In this case, both ways (stats or no stats) ends to the same result... adventure owner is not satisfied. :P

 

 

Edited by arisoft
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Hello Adventure creators, 

 

The Adventure Lab app is still very much in an experimental phase (or "BETA"). Geocaching HQ is still learning from the creativity of Adventure creators and players, and our team is hard at work on several features and fixes on the Adventure Lab platform. 

 

We sincerely do thank everyone for their participation and feedback so that we can look forward to officially announcing and fully releasing the Adventure Lab app in the future. 

 

Be well and stay safe out there!

ktaylor211
Geocaching HQ

 

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On 4/13/2020 at 3:13 PM, ktaylor211 said:

Hello Adventure creators, 

 

The Adventure Lab app is still very much in an experimental phase (or "BETA"). Geocaching HQ is still learning from the creativity of Adventure creators and players, and our team is hard at work on several features and fixes on the Adventure Lab platform. 

 

We sincerely do thank everyone for their participation and feedback so that we can look forward to officially announcing and fully releasing the Adventure Lab app in the future. 

 

Be well and stay safe out there!

ktaylor211
Geocaching HQ

 

What are your plans for the Adventures labs in the future? Flooding the game field and turn geocaching as a virtual game as the other-game-we-should-not-name? You have added even more players in my area today... They are not special anymore to find.

 

You should really do the fixes before adding more players.

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On 4/13/2020 at 7:13 PM, ktaylor211 said:

Hello Adventure creators, 

 

The Adventure Lab app is still very much in an experimental phase (or "BETA"). Geocaching HQ is still learning from the creativity of Adventure creators and players, and our team is hard at work on several features and fixes on the Adventure Lab platform. 

 

We sincerely do thank everyone for their participation and feedback so that we can look forward to officially announcing and fully releasing the Adventure Lab app in the future. 

 

Be well and stay safe out there!

ktaylor211
Geocaching HQ

 

Hi

Thank you HQ for replying - however you mention the app is still in BETA stage however you still put more of these out
how many do you need to learn and improve ?

Are what you have already put out not enough to learn from and move on to the next stage. ?
I keep hearing of more cachers in my area getting these and many asking what to do, etc etc and I am often biting my tongue to say - don't bother - as a CO you don't get any satisfaction after you have made it public - you have no control over maintenance as you would physical caches (such as spurious logging) and this has been the case for many months - the one thing that gave you a little insight into what was going on (the player statistics) has been removed. All this has been fedback to HQ many times by many Ad Lab COs and yet we see no improvement to the app each time more of these labs are handed out to new owners 
It wuld be nice to hear what is being looked at and any changes that are being considered for the potential full roll out 

 

Thank you 

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On 4/8/2020 at 10:18 PM, arisoft said:

 

Why are you interested in stats? What do you lose if statistics are not available?

Feedback is important - for all versions physical and virtual - stats form part of the feedback process (IMO) 
If as a CO you get no feedback on your own caches / labs then you have no idea as to whether what you have put out is working - and by that I mean being enjoyed by the people who find them. If the feed back you get is negative then you can act on that and try to improve it to make it more enjoyable. 
 

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On 4/8/2020 at 5:10 PM, Deepdiggingmole said:

 

I am interested in the stats of my own lab cache and in particular the downloadable finder stats - which as a CO was the only way I could see who has found my Ad lab 
As a CO of a physical cache, a traditional cache for example - I am required to ensure integrity of that cache as part of the maintenance regime - thus I would check the signatures in the log book against the online logs and would challenge any spurious logs - very few COs as we all know do this.
I own a webcam cache now a rarity and have no intention in losing it and so I ensure logs are accompanied by the required webcam image capture rather than a selfie for example - failure to do this could result in my cache being archived for lack of proper maintenance by the CO.
So I would like to think that similar is asked of the CO of an adventure Lab. The first 4 finders of mine did so remotely from other parts of the world - as a CO I would like to be able to delete those - I cant. (I was however able to get all 4 of those cachers to delete their finds with a pleasant and carefully worded email) 
It is evident that many lab caches are found 'remotely' and moreso since many of them are now published on the FB site (which incidently has now posted over 170,000 TB codes !!!)  so again as a CO it would be nice to know who the finders of the Ad lab caches are and deal with any spurious finders 

I've had the pleasure of completing only one Adventure Lab (10 sites).  It is my understanding that you can only log a find if you're within so many feet of a site AND submit the answer to get credit.  How do you arm chair or remotely log your find?  Are you saying they are already hacking into the system to do so?

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15 hours ago, Toeb said:

I've had the pleasure of completing only one Adventure Lab (10 sites).  It is my understanding that you can only log a find if you're within so many feet of a site AND submit the answer to get credit.  How do you arm chair or remotely log your find?  Are you saying they are already hacking into the system to do so?

Oh yes - sadly, from early on, a way was found to fool your PC to thinking it was in a certain place using a false GPS program and as such could take you to any of the required locations. The FB site that has listed all those TB codes has also put out spoilers/answers to Ad Labs and also added the link to the spoof GPS program 

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Today, I played an ALC which was really fun. Cool "story", and a great way to guide the player to the coordinates of the bonus cache (using videos in the journal entries). The bonus cache itself is not yet published (because of COVID-19 restrictions), so I couldn't write a log there. But because I liked the ALC, I said to me "Ok, let's reward the owner with a positive and elaborate feedback within the app". I hate typing long texts on the smartphone, but I wanted to make an exception in this case.

So I started typing away ... only to suddenly realize that I couldn't add more text! Copying the text to my PC to count the characters, I found out that the log is apparently limited to 400 characters :(. So much for long and "rewarding" logs on an ALC...

Edited by baer2006
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On 4/13/2020 at 7:13 PM, ktaylor211 said:

Hello Adventure creators, 

 

The Adventure Lab app is still very much in an experimental phase (or "BETA"). Geocaching HQ is still learning from the creativity of Adventure creators and players, and our team is hard at work on several features and fixes on the Adventure Lab platform. 

 

We sincerely do thank everyone for their participation and feedback so that we can look forward to officially announcing and fully releasing the Adventure Lab app in the future. 

 

Be well and stay safe out there!

ktaylor211
Geocaching HQ

 


Hi 
A year on - it has been a difficult year we all know - but one I would have thought would have given the team at HQ time to reflect on the feedback regarding Ad Labs - these are still being pumped out - I even recieved a second set to work on. 

Has the Beta stage now been fully tested or is it still in the experimental phase (how long is that likely to take ??

 

Thanks

 

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As an AL CO, I would like the notifications and logging to be similar to regular geocaches. Putting a good AL together is a lot of work, and like a normal cache CO, feedback from players is the only reward. When someone finds one of my caches, the notification can make my day. I won't know if someone has finished my AL unless I log into the website and check the Leaderboard numbers. Its a thankless process, and not all players finish or leave a log. COs should also have some control over the logs as they do in the regular game and players should be able to leave feedback like a DNF or Write Note to let the CO know if there is a problem with the question or connectivity or whatever.

 

I realize this is a beta and changes are coming. I appreciate the recent updates to the app and maps. But I agree with the Parent Post. More info and control by the COs would be nice.

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I have had an AL since November 17, 2019, with 5 stages (standard), together with a Mystery Bonus Cache.

As of today, I can see, using the information available:

  • 223 participants

  • 203 completions

  • 166 finish logs in the app

  • Nicks together with finishing times and dates of the first ten finders

The bonus has 158 finds

This leads to some conclusions:

  1. Some cachers start the adventure, then get tired of it and do not finish.

  2. Some cachers finish, but decide not to leave a log in the app, and go for the bonus.

  3. Some cachers finish, do not leave a log in the app, and don’t go for the bonus.

  4. Some cachers use GPS spoofing software, guess some answers, but can’t finish.

  5. Some cachers use spoofing software, and by intelligent guesses (or other spurious methods) get the answers right.

  6. Some like 5) even log the bonus online without having been there (I checked the log)

Having said all this, I fully agree with the sentiments and arguments expressed before. I would like to see who found my Lab, and when. I once asked HQ for the reason not to provide the player completion statistics any more, and received „privacy politics“ as an answer. I’m sorry, but this is b…s... (censored). In what way ist the privacy of the first ten finders less valuable than the privacy of the rest? And: the information in the completion statistics is NOT personalized, as I usually don’t know the person behind the nick (unless I have met him or her in person). And I want to be able to verify valid logs, and to reject obvious fake ones.

So, please, HQ, do something about this!

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On 4/14/2021 at 9:44 PM, Max and 99 said:
On 4/14/2021 at 8:39 PM, PereSant said:

Some like 5) even log the bonus online without having been there (I checked the log)

Are you deleting these? I would. 

On 4/15/2021 at 10:03 AM, PereSant said:

No, I don't. They are cheating, so what? Whom do these guys want to impress?

You are saying you check the logs - this is a lot more than many COs do - though why are you checking them if you are not acting on your findings after 
Also these 'cheats' rely on COs not deleting their logs and they are getting away with cheating because COs do not - COs should send a message out there that the one and only simple rule this game relies on should be adhered to - if you don't sign - don't log a find - if you do your log will get deleted. 

Edited by Deepdiggingmole
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58 minutes ago, Deepdiggingmole said:

You are saying you check the logs - this is a lot more than many COs do - though why are you checking them if you are not acting on your findings after 

I did not say what you quoted me as saying. Please correct that. Someone else said it, not me.

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On 4/9/2020 at 12:30 PM, baer2006 said:

Feedback about who plays my ALC. Is is too much for me as a CO (Lab cache or otherwise) to get some info about who is finding (or claiming to have found it) my cache? If similar rule changes were applied to "normal" caches, i.e. you can claim a find without any feedback whatsoever to the CO, I'd archive my listings the next day.

That is why I archived both of my ALs after the detailed log statistics was removed.

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On 4/9/2020 at 3:01 AM, Deepdiggingmole said:

As a CO -

* You do not get notifications that someone has completed your Ad Lab

This irritates me the most.... I'm sure it's still in 'beta', but its been a while now, and I would have thought CO notifications would have been core functionality built in from the very beginning?

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1 hour ago, lee737 said:

This irritates me the most.... I'm sure it's still in 'beta', but its been a while now, and I would have thought CO notifications would have been core functionality built in from the very beginning?

 

Yes, especially if someone mentions something needing attention in their activity log.

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3 hours ago, lee737 said:

This irritates me the most.... I'm sure it's still in 'beta', but its been a while now, and I would have thought CO notifications would have been core functionality built in from the very beginning?

Yeah I will never understand how it was decided that it wasn't necessary to be able to contact the CO in the app if you have any issues.

 

Also I don't understand how it's still in beta after over 2 years. 

Edited by Lynx Humble
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On 4/13/2020 at 7:13 PM, ktaylor211 said:

Hello Adventure creators, 

 

The Adventure Lab app is still very much in an experimental phase (or "BETA"). Geocaching HQ is still learning from the creativity of Adventure creators and players, and our team is hard at work on several features and fixes on the Adventure Lab platform. 

 

We sincerely do thank everyone for their participation and feedback so that we can look forward to officially announcing and fully releasing the Adventure Lab app in the future. 

 

Be well and stay safe out there!

ktaylor211
Geocaching HQ

 

I posted the original comment 18 months ago - This update was posted a few days after
Nothing further has been achieved - has anything been learned from AL creator and players ?
What features and fixes have been done as I see very little change over the last 2 years ?

I have now had a third set to put out - I have not done so 

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On 7/21/2021 at 7:48 AM, Lynx Humble said:

Yeah I will never understand how it was decided that it wasn't necessary to be able to contact the CO in the app if you have any issues.

 

Also I don't understand how it's still in beta after over 2 years. 

Exactly. Like the AL I did last week  ( I was the guinea pig) and we could not locate one of the stages because it was over half a mile away. It seems like the ability to contact the ALO would be a basic function. 

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37 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

Exactly. Like the AL I did last week  ( I was the guinea pig) and we could not locate one of the stages because it was over half a mile away. It seems like the ability to contact the ALO would be a basic function. 

You can see their name, so you can message them. However, not all COs check their messages all the time.

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On 7/21/2021 at 8:48 AM, Lynx Humble said:

Yeah I will never understand how it was decided that it wasn't necessary to be able to contact the CO in the app if you have any issues.

 

Also I don't understand how it's still in beta after over 2 years. 

2 years?

Since Adventure Labs are based upon Lab Caches... this has been a beta project for over 7 years. 

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