Adventure Lab - How many more should there be?

[+pipatah]

The Adventure Labs have sprung up like mushrooms in the last weeks,  not only in my homezone. I myself have already published a round with five stages and already received a "credit" for another five. I don't know if the saturation limit is slowly being reached, what do you think?

[+Max and 99]

2 minutes ago, pipatah said:

The Adventure Labs have sprung up like mushrooms in the last weeks,  not only in my homezone. I myself have already published a round with five stages and already received a "credit" for another five. I don't know if the saturation limit is slowly being reached, what do you think?

It is quickly being reached in certain areas. 

[+baer2006]

39 minutes ago, pipatah said:

The Adventure Labs have sprung up like mushrooms in the last weeks,  not only in my homezone. I myself have already published a round with five stages and already received a "credit" for another five. I don't know if the saturation limit is slowly being reached, what do you think?

I know your home area, it's the same as mine .

Yes, I think there is some kind of saturation being reached. The app is beginning to be unusable, because it's increasingly hard for me to find new adventures among the heap of completed ones. A feature to hide completed (or ignored!) ALs is really missing! Also, the vast majority of ALs don't look overly creative to me. It mostly feels like an ordinary multi with 5 virtual stages and a final cache. The only differences are the awkward app with all its drawbacks compared to regular caching apps or GPSRs, and 6 "points" vs. a single one (which I definitely don't regard as a benefit).

[+IceColdUK]

A bit of overlap between this topic and ...

https://forums.geocaching.com/GC/index.php?/topic/358190-stop-adventure-labs/

[+thebruce0]

As a kind of 'test', I posted neutrally about the AL power trail, and so far unanimously the response has been wows and yays and praise.

It's much easier to be positive than negative, but if loudest and most quantitative voices of the general geocaching community are in excitement, it's probably going to take a very big "problem" to change the pace of things...  Hopefully a threshold will be reached sooner rather than later and there may be some re-evaluation of how the Adventure Lab segment of gc.com progresses.

[+Lynx Humble]

In my area there are currently 238 lab caches and a bunch more to come sadly and 21 740 regular caches.

 

They are currently the 5th most popular type of caches here but I predict they will be number 3 before the end of the year.

 

18 months ago when they released the app they were special to find but not anymore. 

 

Like I said in the other topic :

 

Groundspeak please Stop releasing new lab caches and correct the numerous issues they currently have.

[+Max and 99]

In my metro, of about 1.3 million people, there are 4 ALs.

70,000 mi^2 for my state, with about a dozen ALs.

We are so far from saturation. Nothing like the area maps some of you have posted! 

 

Edited September 8, 2020 by Max and 99

[+barefootjeff]

My region (New South Wales Central Coast, Australia) currently has 2 ALs and 539 regular caches in an area of 1680 square kilometres, so nowhere near saturation for either type.

[+baer2006]

14 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

As a kind of 'test', I posted neutrally about the AL power trail, and so far unanimously the response has been wows and yays and praise.

What else do you expect when you talk about a new PT, be it made of ALs or real caches? The numbers crowd falls all over itself from excitement.

Quite a while ago, in a German FB group someone mentioned there is a new Mega-PT in southern France - more than 5000 caches (which is absolutely huge for Europe). A lot of people liked that, and many were like "We MUST do this ASAP!!!!!".

 

So, of course you get "wows and yays" for an AL-PT(*). I'm still not convinced that it's a good idea, though .

 

(*) I just noticed that "ALPT" are the first four letters of the German word "Alptraum", an alternate spelling (less common but valid) of "Albtraum", which means "nightmare" !

[+Goldenwattle]

9 minutes ago, baer2006 said:

Quite a while ago, in a German FB group someone mentioned there is a new Mega-PT in southern France - more than 5000 caches (which is absolutely huge for Europe). A lot of people liked that, and many were like "We MUST do this ASAP!!!!!".

Likely many are the same cachers who like to log printed lists of trackables.

[+thebruce0]

5 hours ago, baer2006 said:

So, of course you get "wows and yays" for an AL-PT(*). I'm still not convinced that it's a good idea, though .

Nor I.

But there wasn't one response even hinting at the downside of over-saturation, or calling out 'for the numbers' geocachers, etc. As I said though, most everything on social media is going to be almost universally negative (easier to criticize an error than praise consistency), or overwhelming positive (join in the excitement, and who wants to be a downer?)

In this case, it's certainly overwhelmingly positive - and the danger of that is that the reasonable criticisms can get drowned out. So hopefully HQ isn't just setting aside concerns raised by many here just because feedback is overwhelmingly positive out in the mass social digital world

[+barefootjeff]

This morning I received an email from HQ awarding me an AL credit. In the email it said:

 

Quote

• If you complete your Adventure early (by October 31, 2020), you have the chance to be selected to create a second Adventure. Geocaching HQ will randomly select at least 300 creators (with geographic distribution) to receive a second Adventure Lab credit.

 

So it looks like there'll be at least 300 more offered after the end of October. I'm not sure how effective the geographic distribution will be, though, as there's no limit on how far from home you can create one.

[+mustakorppi]

There’s not a single one in my hometown, and many of the neighbouring municipalities have either 0 or 1.

 

But to you who live in ”saturated” areas, if your main hobby was ”adventure labbing” how long would it take to run out of stuff to do in your area? 

[+medicrrt]

I think that saturation of adventure labs depends on your location.  The closest one to me is 66 miles away.

[+Lynx Humble]

27 minutes ago, medicrrt said:

I think that saturation of adventure labs depends on your location.  The closest one to me is 66 miles away.

I have 24 adventures under 66 miles and half of them under 10 miles. Living in the biggest town of Atlantic Canada doesn't help but lab cache owner here try to spread them but that doesn't always seem to be the case with screenshot posted elsewhere in the world with 50 adventures in the same area...

Edited September 18, 2020 by Lynx Humble

[+Lynx Humble]

On 9/7/2020 at 10:05 PM, Lynx Humble said:

In my area there are currently 238 lab caches and a bunch more to come sadly and 21 740 regular caches.

 

They are currently the 5th most popular type of caches here but I predict they will be number 3 before the end of the year.

 

18 months ago when they released the app they were special to find but not anymore. 

 

Like I said in the other topic :

 

Groundspeak please Stop releasing new lab caches and correct the numerous issues they currently have.

A bit of 2 months later my prediction happened and lab caches are officially the 3rd most popular type in Nova Scotia now after Trad and Mystery.

 

There are now 343 lab caches and 21 600 regular caches.

 

Like expected Groundspeak didn't corrected any of the issues since my previous comment and continued to flood the map with cheap +1 so the app is even less usable.

[+barefootjeff]

20 minutes ago, Lynx Humble said:

A bit of 2 months later my prediction happened and lab caches are officially the 3rd most popular type in Nova Scotia now after Trad and Mystery.

 

There are now 343 lab caches and 21 600 regular caches.

 

Like expected Groundspeak didn't corrected any of the issues since my previous comment and continued to flood the map with cheap +1 so the app is even less usable.

 

These are the numbers for my region (New South Wales Central Coast) covering 1680 square kilometres:

1. Traditional       334
2. Mystery           138
3. Multi                  48
4. Earthcache       10
5. AL                        9
6. Virtual                 3
7. LBH                     1

Still a ways to go before they get into the top three here.

[+Lynx Humble]

14 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

 

These are the numbers for my region (New South Wales Central Coast) covering 1680 square kilometres:

1. Traditional       334
2. Mystery           138
3. Multi                  48
4. Earthcache       10
5. AL                        9
6. Virtual                 3
7. LBH                     1

Still a ways to go before they get into the top three here.

Have you done X5 for the numbers of smileys that those adventures gives you? If not you would be close to #3 spot.

 

Here the breakdown for 55,284 km2 here

 

1. Traditional      18 974

2. Mystery             1 823

3. Lab caches          343

4. Multi                      336

5. Earthcache           313

6. Wherigo                  72

7. Letterbox                60

8. Virtual                     13

9. Webcam                   2

 

 

[+Max and 99]

So far my City of 87 square miles has fared well, with only 2 1/5 AL (That's 11 'caches'). ? I know that more are coming but our map looks nothing like the saturated ones I've seen posted by others! 

[+barefootjeff]

14 minutes ago, Lynx Humble said:

Have you done X5 for the numbers of smileys that those adventures gives you? If not you would be close to #3 spot.

 

Yeah, okay, but they're not 5 things cluttering up a map, each AL only shows one thing on the app's main map and probably would still only show one thing if they ever integrate ALs into the geocaching maps.

[+Lynx Humble]

14 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

 

Yeah, okay, but they're not 5 things cluttering up a map, each AL only shows one thing on the app's main map and probably would still only show one thing if they ever integrate ALs into the geocaching maps.

 

I hope they are not going to show just one thing into the geocaching maps because we have some ALs here that spread for hundreds of km so just one point would be useless like presently. Walking ALs are rare here.

 

Even in a cluttered area like Halifax you have to do multiple AL at the same time if you don't want to backtrack so you really need to see all locations for all AL at the same time except for the linear one.

[+barefootjeff]

6 minutes ago, Lynx Humble said:

I hope they are not going to show just one thing into the geocaching maps because we have some ALs here that spread for hundreds of km so just one point would be useless like presently.

 

We have some multis that span hundreds of kilometres and one of mine spans about twenty:

 

 

So I guess that's pretty useless just showing the one icon at the start on the main map. Oh, but right, multis are pretty useless anyway since you only get one smiley for them. Silly me.

[+Lynx Humble]

43 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

 

We have some multis that span hundreds of kilometres and one of mine spans about twenty:

 

 

So I guess that's pretty useless just showing the one icon at the start on the main map. Oh, but right, multis are pretty useless anyway since you only get one smiley for them. Silly me.

Hum multi are likes linear AL so you only needs to show the starting point. 

 

Most AL can be started from anywhere so I would need to see on the main maps there are a stop in Brooklyn so I don't miss it while being in that area.

 

Personally I never been a fan of multis because of the higher risk of DNFs and yeah you only get one smiley for it.

[+ecanderson]

2 minutes ago, Lynx Humble said:

Most AL can be started from anywhere ...

Unfortunately, most here leave the setting on the sequential default, so we have many ALs that must be followed sequentially that as easily be 'random access'.

 

When a finder is mixing in AL searches with regular cache searches for a day's caching run, it's a bit of a bummer not to be able to properly plan routing when there's no particular reason for the sequenced ALs.

 

At least you can see the other circles beyond step 1 (if you look REALLY closely at the map), so there's at least a clue where the individual steps might be, but it would be much nicer to know the correct order in advance, if order actually makes sense.

[+barefootjeff]

38 minutes ago, Lynx Humble said:

Most AL can be started from anywhere so I would need to see on the main maps there are a stop in Brooklyn so I don't miss it while being in that area.

 

The three virtual waypoints of that multi can be visited in any order although starting it from Koolewong works in best with the trains if doing it all in one hit. WP3 at Wondabyne is best visited last, though, as that's where the hike to GZ starts from.

 

38 minutes ago, Lynx Humble said:

Personally I never been a fan of multis because of the higher risk of DNFs and yeah you only get one smiley for it.

 

Funny, as the higher risk of DNFs and the one smiley for a full day's caching (or even several days) is something I like about multis. They generally have a lot more meat in them than a guaranteed quick find P&G or AL stage.

Edited November 18, 2020 by barefootjeff

[+Calypso62]

59 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

Funny, as the higher risk of DNFs and the one smiley for a full day's caching (or even several days) is something I like about multis. They generally have a lot more meat in them than a guaranteed quick find P&G or AL stage.

 

I couldn't agree more barefootjeff. I just love the challenge and adventure of multicaches.... as you well know!!! ??

Edited November 18, 2020 by Calypso62

[+NLBokkie]

7 hours ago, ecanderson said:

Unfortunately, most here leave the setting on the sequential default, so we have many ALs that must be followed sequentially that as easily be 'random access'.

 

Actually, that is not the default. When a new AL is being built, it starts with the "Play locations in sequential order" switch set to off. It's a deliberate change that AL creators make . . .

Edited November 18, 2020 by NLBokkie

[+ecanderson]

Guess I hadn't noticed that when I built mine, and it's been a while.  Apart from those who want to try to do their bonus cache reveal in the 5th journal, what's the point?  (And that doesn't even work properly).  I scattered my bonus cache info through all 5 stages, and left it asequential.