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Gill & Tony

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2 hours ago, ecanderson said:

To those of you whose ALs were armchaired by "the very first", perhaps the questions weren't site-specific enough to avoid being guessed from the comfort of home?  Obviously there wasn't a Facebook or other site where they could have received coordinates from someone else, since there wasn't a 'someone else'.  I had no doubt at all that my own AL couldn't possibly be armchaired by the first to log it.  No possible way to 'look up' the answers to several of the stages.

The question for my first stage used to be "How many rectangular light fittings are on the wall?"  The answer was two.  One person answered stage 1 correctly, but then didn't answer stage 2. where the question was not guessable.  The question for stage 1 was immediately changed to something that you have to be at the site to answer - not really guessable.

 

 

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3 hours ago, ecanderson said:

To those of you whose ALs were armchaired by "the very first", perhaps the questions weren't site-specific enough to avoid being guessed from the comfort of home?  Obviously there wasn't a Facebook or other site where they could have received coordinates from someone else, since there wasn't a 'someone else'.  I had no doubt at all that my own AL couldn't possibly be armchaired by the first to log it.  No possible way to 'look up' the answers to several of the stages.

 

I intentionally placed a guessable ALC answer in the Adventure Lab location that required visitors to passby all the other Adventure Lab locations, entrapment of the cheater who visited only the guessable armchaired location.

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44 minutes ago, ecanderson said:

Ah -  a bit of confusion here.  No problem that some portions of the AL might be 'guessable', but one or more should not be, making the completion of the AL (and obtaining necessary information for any bonus cache) impossible.  That can be made to work whether the AL must be done serially or not.

 

They still get a Lab cache find for each stage they guess.  if the AL is done serially, they won't know the question for stage 2 until they have successfully guessed stage 1.  Making stage 1 unguessable effectively locks out the other stages of a serial AL.

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3 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

Just wanted to clarify. Is there any limit to the number of guesses?

 

There doesn't seem to be. On one I did, a waypoint required the number of posts along a fence, of which there are quite a lot. I counted, the app said no. I counted again, same answer, same result. I tried one or two above and below my count, still no joy. Expanded my range a bit further, nup. In the end I started from one and went up, eventually striking gold at a number that bore no resemblance to the physical fence. It turned out the CO had misread a digit from his notes when transcribing it into the AL answers and my initial count was correct. It's now been fixed. But yes, it was happy to let me make what was probably at least thirty incorrect attempts.

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Just now, barefootjeff said:

 

There doesn't seem to be. On one I did, a waypoint required the number of posts along a fence, of which there are quite a lot. I counted, the app said no. I counted again, same answer, same result. I tried one or two above and below my count, still no joy. Expanded my range a bit further, nup. In the end I started from one and went up, eventually striking gold at a number that bore no resemblance to the physical fence. It turned out the CO had misread a digit from his notes when transcribing it into the AL answers and my initial count was correct. It's now been fixed. But yes, it was happy to let me make what was probably at least thirty incorrect attempts.

We had a similar experience. my husband went inside the building to get the answer from a plaque in the visitor center. The app said he was wrong, and all he had to answer was the nth word on the plaque. We could not get that answer right! After about 30 attempts guessing words, ignoring initials in people's names, ignoring the title, etc. We figured out that all the responses said incorrect except for one that continued to give us a circulating loop. That's when I took a guess that it really was the correct answer but since there's no Wi-Fi it couldn't take our answer. So we had the right answer almost right away but didn't understand at first why it wouldn't accept it. Lesson learned.  

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7 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

We had a similar experience. my husband went inside the building to get the answer from a plaque in the visitor center. The app said he was wrong, and all he had to answer was the nth word on the plaque. We could not get that answer right! After about 30 attempts guessing words, ignoring initials in people's names, ignoring the title, etc. We figured out that all the responses said incorrect except for one that continued to give us a circulating loop. That's when I took a guess that it really was the correct answer but since there's no Wi-Fi it couldn't take our answer. So we had the right answer almost right away but didn't understand at first why it wouldn't accept it. Lesson learned.  

_Wrong_ answers are rejected by the app itself, without any data connection. Only if the app assumes that the answer is correct, it will upload it to the server (resulting in a spinning loop if the connection is bad or broken).

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Something else that really annoys me: on iOS if I switch to another app, e.g. cachly for a while then the AL app closes down in the background and I have to start it up again (it's quite slow), then select the AL again and resume. With just one AL in the vicinity it's ok, but in an area with many of them really infuriating. And why do I have to zoom in after starting/resuming an AL? I'd guess that most people who do one are in the general area already.

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13 minutes ago, terratin said:

Something else that really annoys me: on iOS if I switch to another app, e.g. cachly for a while then the AL app closes down in the background and I have to start it up again

Same issue appears on Android units (at least on mine).

 

Hans

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Bring back GPX-files! Using GSAK or other tools for generating statisics, working with ALCs is a real PITA. After e.g. a holiday and playing some 20 or 30 ALCs, you have to do a lot of post processing if you want to have ALCs in your statistics. So please bring back GPX-files. This would help a lot.

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On 4/25/2020 at 2:44 AM, Gill & Tony said:

If we have just one idea per post, those who agree with the idea can like the post, that way we get an indication of how popular the ideas are.

 

I have three more wishes (surely there are more but that's the three I am thinking of right now) and as Gill and Tony suggest I'll split them up in three posts.

 

1) My biggest wish for the labs is: make them playable offline. I want to be able to download them at home completely and then solve them in the field. The "points" may be updated later when I am home again using my homes stabile WIFI.

 

Sometimes the mobile data net is very weak and I don't have too much of free data available. It should be possible to put the whole adventure in one file as it works for wherigos so that you don't need internet connection in the field!?

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Genie, here is my second wish for the lab caches:

 

2) I do not want to use my mobile phone for routing. That's why I have a GPS device with good maps and the possibility to easily enter new waypoints.

So if I want to search for the next "stage" of a lab cache the app should show coordinates so I can enter those in my GPS and use it to find the next destination.

 

This one should be easily realised and would make things much easier.

Edited by frostengel
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And here is the third one - as simple as that:

 

3) Logging is an important part of geocaching for me. I tend to write long and detailed logs to give something back to the owner - and I like to get such logs with my caches.

Good logs usually aren't written using a mobile device - it's just not meant for long texts. So please: Make it possible/easier to write the logs at a normal computer, not only in the app.

Plus: a log for a normal can be 4000 signs and you can add a second (write note) if that's too less. With adventure labs the log lenght is much more restricted so there will never be detailed logs for the lab (maybe for the bonus). Change that, change the whole logging experience: DNF logs etc. where mentioned before. The app makes us "bad loggers".... :-(

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14 minutes ago, HHL said:
19 minutes ago, frostengel said:

With adventure labs the log lenght is much more restricted

Put your "Quality" logs to the bonus caches. It's that simple.

It's not that simple. Many AL don't have bonus caches (3 of may last 4 fell into that category), but I still want to give meaningful feedback. That's much easier if a) you can type it on a proper keyboard and b) the character limit is not so low.

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4 minutes ago, baer2006 said:

It's not that simple. Many AL don't have bonus caches (3 of may last 4 fell into that category), but I still want to give meaningful feedback. That's much easier if a) you can type it on a proper keyboard and b) the character limit is not so low.

 

That's it. And - in addition to that - when logging the bonus cache I want to give feedback and tell about the bonus cache. It's a cache and it's itself worth more than just a "+1", isn't it?

 

I usually do as HHL suggests (if there is a bonus) but I then want to share my story about the lab cache and the bonus cache at the same time. Even worse: I want to share my story about five lab caches and a real cache in one log.

 

Each lab scores a point at the geocaching.com website. So each lab cache should be worth its own log. But I know that's too much to claim: but please let me log the lab (the five labs) and the bonus individually with a normal log - not a mobile phone one (my fingers are too thick for that little keyboard).

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On 10/22/2020 at 1:08 PM, Malcelly73 said:

I would like to be able to make my own list of AdLabs I have done to then hide from the map. 
The map is getting very congested where I live and I’m wondering if I’m missing the new ones as it’s difficult to see them.

 

Judging from the comments on this forum, the option to hide completed ALs is by far the most-requested addition to the AL App.

 

Today my phone told me that a new version of the app is available. I downloaded it, looked at the changes ... and all there is is a "Share this Adventure" button?!

I'm semi-seriously thinking about changing the wide image in my Profile Page to show a banner saying "Groundspeak delivered a new AL App update, and all I got was this lousy button" :mad:.

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Keep Geocaching and Adventure Labs separate

 

A completed AL should not count as a found geocache: it's not. More important, single steps of Adventure Labs should never count as found geocaches. They are NOT geocaches. Bonus mystery caches are, but not single steps. 

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23 minutes ago, Tshio said:

They are NOT geocaches.

That's wrong. They are the same way geocaches as Virtuals are: no box, no log, plus ALR. The only difference is: LabCaches are grouped to one themed AdventureLab and could be played online only.

Edited by HHL
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12 hours ago, HHL said:
12 hours ago, Tshio said:

They are NOT geocaches.

That's wrong. They are the same way geocaches as Virtuals are: no box, no log, plus ALR. The only difference is: LabCaches are grouped to one themed AdventureLab and could be played online only.

 

The similarity of an AL stage to a geocache of any sort is pretty superficial. On an AL stage there's no log to write even if you want to say something and nothing to let the CO know you've completed it beyond the first three on the leaderboard. There's also no distance constraint that you'd have on a series of easy traditionals so if the AL owner wanted to, they could put all the locations at the same place and just ask different questions about the same sign (or even the same five questions I suppose). While an easy P&G might get you the same one smiley as solving a tough puzzle, going on a rugged hike, navigating your way through a convoluted multi or fulfilling all the requirements on an Earthcache or virtual, those tougher caches are recognised in the +1 in the relevant square of the finder's D/T grid and various other statistics. Not so with ALs, there's nothing to distinguish one that requires lots of travelling or rugged hiking from one that can be completed on a street corner.

Edited by barefootjeff
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16 hours ago, HHL said:

That's wrong. They are the same way geocaches as Virtuals are

There is a substantial difference between the steps of an AL and a Virtual Cache: AL is not Geocaching, it's another game. If you make a bonus cache that you can find only by completing certain achievents in another game, i would accept it. You can find the bonus cache only if you completed an Adventure Lab? It's ok. You can find the bonus cache only if you completed level 114 of Fruit Ninja? It's ok (but i don't think such a cache would be ever accepted by the reviewer). If I don't want to play AL or Fruit Ninja, i'll simply won't find the bonus cache. But why, why should every step of an Adventure Lab count as a geocache? Let's make every level or Fruit Ninja count as well then!

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2 hours ago, ivans said:

Request to developers:

Be so kind and ADD possibility to hide already found AL. 
BTW: I tried feedback via app with no success :-(

AB971E15-525B-4EFB-99C2-B2C794F02B81.png

 

Absolute chaos. This option should be added a year ago.

But remember you can always switch to the list-view.

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On 11/28/2020 at 9:52 AM, ChrisDen said:

I wish ALs would be allowed where there are nominal entrance fees. Physical caches are banned in most of our national parks and are ideal places for ALS but all the parks have some entrance fee. 

 

I think they are? As long as the owner of the land agrees, that is . . .

 

But apparently I'm wrong in thinking that. See below.

Edited by NLBokkie
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1 hour ago, ecanderson said:

@miaux

I keep meaning to go back and look, but is the distinction (when you open them) whether there is one red dot and four gray, or five red dots?

 

Yes, when you start them.

On the description page, all dots are always dark orange.

After clicking Start, one is dark orange and the are rest grey when there is a required order.

Otherwise, one is dark orange and the rest are light orange and can be selected.

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On 11/21/2020 at 11:12 PM, sernikk said:

 

Absolute chaos. This option should be added a year ago.

But remember you can always switch to the list-view.

I know, but most lines are blue and you must scroll a lot ;-)

 

I think to add this feature could be pretty simple, because split into blue and orange already exists, so only switch is needed. 

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16 minutes ago, ivans said:

I know, but most lines are blue and you must scroll a lot ;-)

 

I think to add this feature could be pretty simple, because split into blue and orange already exists, so only switch is needed. 

I think too it would have been easy enough to implement but they are dragging their feet for a very long time now and they are now promising next February...

 

That wouldn't really have been an issue if AL would have been a limited release and would then be far apart but Groundspeak had the not so bright idea to FLOOD THE MAP without making sure that the app would be able to handle it.... 

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