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Stop this annoying LAB project


RedHunters

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2 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

I rode to a local AL for the exercise expecting to do one AL to find the bonus cache. I find a purpose encourages me to get out and exercise, and I look at destinations near me. I expected to do one AL and then be able to log the bonus cache, but found three ALs lined up and linked. I needed to do all three ALs to get the bonus cache. Many of the WPs were no more then 15 metres apart and they were logged quickly. In the distance of about 400 metres I got 15 smilies. I didn't time this, but they didn't take long to complete. (And then the bonus cache). Compare that to a multicache. Compare that to a multicache that I did which stretches for over 4,000kms for ONE smilie. Over 8,000kms minimal return. Puts many ALs into perspective. Even compare that to simple traditional caches. You are not allowed to have 15 caches in 400 metres, but this is all dandy it seems for ALs, which are given the same value. ALs are cheapening geocaching. They are also cheapening the wonderful lab caches done at MEGAs. It would not be so bad if it were one smilie after completing one AL, but 15 smilies, where a multicache would get one smilie for completing this one task, or at the most 3 smilies for the allowed traditional caches in the same distance.

Yes, I did do them, as I find them an incentive to get on my bike. I would not have been able to log the bonus cache if I had not completed the ALs.

I am lucky in my area nobody did this sillyness of putting all 5 locations at the same spot. I hope you gave those 'Adventure' a rating of 1 star.

 

I don't know why Groundspeak still push that cache type hard even if the community is strongly divided about them.

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15 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

Compare that to a multicache.

 

Over my eight years of caching I've found 86 multis, most of which took at least several hours to complete (some took several days). The meaty ones I've particularly enjoyed, like GC5K9KJ, leave lasting memories of the great times this game has to offer.

 

By contrast, in the seven months since the first AL appeared in my region, I've completed 15 of them, most of which were done in under an hour with just a bit of urban walking (although some were a bit more adventurous and on par with a good multi). Yet my "find count" from those will soon eclipse that of my multis. Once I realised how much they were distorting my caching history, I decided to delete all AL finds from my caching stats. All the ones I've done have had a bonus cache so its smiley is an adequate place-marker (or "token of achievement" I suppose) for the AL that led to it.

 

Deleting AL finds has to be done one waypoint at a time, though, so I think it'd be nice if there was an option where you could select whether you wanted a smiley for each waypoint, a smiley just for completed ALs or no smileys at all from them. That way everyone could chose how they're incorporated into their caching history without having to keep jigging it.

Edited by barefootjeff
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On 10/14/2020 at 3:50 PM, RedHunters said:

Stop this LAB thing because:

  • Receiving up to 5 points for one LAB Cache is destroying Multicaches. People are already prefering LAB over "normal" caches.
  • LAB bonus caches block locations für "reals" geocaches an cannot be found without finding the LAB itself
  • LAB owners keep hiding bonus Caches because of the missing feeling to finding a box at the end - this is bizarre and shows to me an systematic failure behind the LAB idea
  • Don't bring half-backed ideas the us, we all know what happend to Wherigo, Waymarking aso
  • LAB seems to be a newer version of Wherigo? And why did'nt you just develope Wherigo instead of leaving it in alpha stadium?

 

Please try to develope and strengthen the existing cachetypes with your ideas instead of destabilizing them.

 

greetings from Austria

Stefan

I couldn't disagree more.

It is one of the nicest ways to do sightseeing in bigger AND smaller places and there IS a big difference to the options you have in multi caches.

Honestly, I don't really think that LAB-boni block other geocaches. Come on! There is so much space around, and so many possibilities. You rarely see the bonus on spot of a sight. I rather think badly made traditionals are in the way of good multis. Somebody throws a film container under another small pebble and thus blocks a nice spot. 

The only thing I would change is the counting. One LAB would be one geocache for me, not five. But then statistics ruined parts of our hobby anyway, by "powercachers" not really finding caches (but let their buddies log them), writing cryptic minimal logs and boasting with statistics everyone knows they cheated in. So - in my eyes it should not be the statistics but the outdoor fun that counts.

 

BTW: Happy Easter!

Peter

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3 minutes ago, HumboldtundBlackJack said:

I couldn't disagree more.

It is one of the nicest ways to do sightseeing in bigger AND smaller places and there IS a big difference to the options you have in multi caches.

Honestly, I don't really think that LAB-boni block other geocaches. Come on! There is so much space around, and so many possibilities. You rarely see the bonus on spot of a sight. I rather think badly made traditionals are in the way of good multis. Somebody throws a film container under another small pebble and thus blocks a nice spot. 

The only thing I would change is the counting. One LAB would be one geocache for me, not five. But then statistics ruined parts of our hobby anyway, by "powercachers" not really finding caches (but let their buddies log them), writing cryptic minimal logs and boasting with statistics everyone knows they cheated in. So - in my eyes it should not be the statistics but the outdoor fun that counts.

 

BTW: Happy Easter!

Peter

One AL cache being worth one find, rather than five, would work for me. I would be keener then to find more of them.

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It's a relief lab caches are limited!  Were they not, you know someone would place a lab cache power trail somewhere.  Were you to average a lab cache every two minutes (it's possible if you just put in the answer provided in the "question"), it would be possible to do 3K finds in a day.

 

These lab caches are the ultimate progression of smaller, cheaper cache containers (you can't get cheaper than a virtual waypoint).  Caching started with a log book.  People wrote in the book and took their time.  Then containers got smaller and more numerous, so people only wrote their handles on the log slip.  Power trails popped up.  Now, with lab caches, you don't even have to find anything or write anything down.  But you can be assured after one or two generations, geocaching will have a renaissance and larger caches will become a thing again.  After all, preferences are cyclic.

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19 minutes ago, Ranger Fox said:

It's a relief lab caches are limited!  Were they not, you know someone would place a lab cache power trail somewhere.

You do know there are lab cache power trails, right? Thousands on the Lincoln highway and now they're working on thousands on Route 66.

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1 hour ago, Max and 99 said:
2 hours ago, Ranger Fox said:

It's a relief lab caches are limited!  Were they not, you know someone would place a lab cache power trail somewhere.

You do know there are lab cache power trails, right? Thousands on the Lincoln highway and now they're working on thousands on Route 66.

 

I sensed some sarcasm in Ranger Fox's post :P

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1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

 

I sensed some sarcasm in Ranger Fox's post :P

 

41 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

I suspected that was maybe the case but wasn't convinced. ?

 

Actually, that wasn't sarcasm.  I didn't know someone had already done that.  Thank you for giving me more credit than I deserved.  (I don't listen to podcasts, don't read blogs, don't receive Groudspeak's newsletter, don't watch videos, don't read much of the forum except for Wherigo, and am generally out of touch.  I just go out and find crap, and that's enough for me.  I'd rather play the game than talk, read, listen to, or watch something about it.)

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"But you can be assured after one or two generations, geocaching will have a renaissance and larger caches will become a thing again.  After all, preferences are cyclic. "

 

I hope I will have a high speed power driven wheelchair by then and will be able to remember how to operate a GPSr

 

Edited by Mausebiber
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4 minutes ago, Mausebiber said:

"But you can be assured after one or two generations, geocaching will have a renaissance and larger caches will become a thing again.  After all, preferences are cyclic. "

 

I hope I will have a high speed power driven wheelchair by then and will be able to remember how to operate a GPSr

 

What are you talking about?  By then, they'll have something like Google Glass.  But don't look to be the first to do something like that as I already created an app for Glass and made a video of the first time someone had ever found a cache using Glass.  I'm still an old fogie and want my hand-held GPSr, not a smartphone.

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4 hours ago, Ranger Fox said:

But you can be assured after one or two generations, geocaching will have a renaissance and larger caches will become a thing again.

 

Best of both worlds on this AL? The bonus cache is a 2 litre Sistema with a beautifully-crafted logbook and plenty of SWAG for the little ones:

 

Container.jpg.f9e661b8cdf2db765499f76fb05871fe.jpg

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16 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

The bonus cache is a 2 litre Sistema with a beautifully-crafted logbook and plenty of SWAG for the little ones

 

Very nice bonus cache, unfortunately, I don't see a container this size very often.  It would be perfect, if the bonus cache would have some kind of a riddle so it can be found without visiting all lab-cache.

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15 minutes ago, Mausebiber said:

 

Very nice bonus cache, unfortunately, I don't see a container this size very often.  It would be perfect, if the bonus cache would have some kind of a riddle so it can be found without visiting all lab-cache.

 

In my region, the smalls (231) and regulars (136) still outnumber the micros (133). My own AL bonus caches aren't quite as well-presented as Team737's but are still a good size:

 

BonusCaches.jpg.0b781cf83700df2cbce321ea792eeb3c.jpg

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3 hours ago, Ranger Fox said:
4 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

 

I sensed some sarcasm in Ranger Fox's post :P

 

3 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

I suspected that was maybe the case but wasn't convinced. ?

 

Actually, that wasn't sarcasm.  I didn't know someone had already done that.

 

I knew I should have left "But I could be wrong!" but I was so sure it must be sarcasm ;D  Well, yep, it's being worked on. And it's pretty popular. But from what I've seen the AL power trails efforts are fairly polarizing. Many love it, and many detest it. 

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On 10/14/2020 at 2:07 PM, Max and 99 said:

Many of the adventure lab locations I did were not wheelchair accessible, and there's no way to know in advance. 

I have been pleasantly surprised at the recent Adventure Labs in my area that specifically state in the description that they are wheelchair accessible.

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44 minutes ago, Ragnemalm said:

One more thing... This forum states "Formerly the Lab Caches forum, this is a place to discuss playing Adventures. ". Is that implying that Lab Caches (not ALCs) are so dead and buried that they don't even have a forum any more?

Mega events get to publish temporary Adventures now, if that's what you're asking. I think the mega we had last week had five 10 waypoint Adventures in a walkable area that already had a few normal Adventures...

Edited by mustakorppi
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Numbers, Numbers, Numbers. Why is everyone obsessed with Numbers. Its a game gets you out of the house fresh air and excersize.  Enjoy yourself. Say you and your buddy have 1000 finds and $20 in your wallets. You go out and find a bison tube in a tree you wind up with 1001 finds. Your buddy goes and does a five part AL he has 1005 finds. You both still have $20 in your wallet at the end of the day. Enjoy whatever. Just Do It. The only important number you have to worry about is the $29.99 to keep your premium membership valid.

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2 hours ago, mty55 said:

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers. Why is everyone obsessed with Numbers. Its a game gets you out of the house fresh air and excersize.  Enjoy yourself. Say you and your buddy have 1000 finds and $20 in your wallets. You go out and find a bison tube in a tree you wind up with 1001 finds. Your buddy goes and does a five part AL he has 1005 finds. You both still have $20 in your wallet at the end of the day. Enjoy whatever. Just Do It. The only important number you have to worry about is the $29.99 to keep your premium membership valid.

Well Groundspeak encourage numbers. The one with 1005 finds is closer to get a second reach the peak souvenir this month than the one with 1001 finds...

 

Personally I will worry about the 29.99 when Groundspeak hire more people to give us upgrade faster than the current snail pace.

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5 hours ago, Lynx Humble said:

Well Groundspeak encourage numbers. The one with 1005 finds is closer to get a second reach the peak souvenir this month than the one with 1001 finds...

 

Personally I will worry about the 29.99 when Groundspeak hire more people to give us upgrade faster than the current snail pace.

Once again Number of souvenirs are meaningless just like the number of finds. Nobody is getting cheated out of anything. Just have fun. Maybe if everybody that caches pays their dues and becomes a premium member maybe Groundspeak can hire more employees to fulfill your wishes.

 

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15 hours ago, mty55 said:

Once again Number of souvenirs are meaningless just like the number of finds. Nobody is getting cheated out of anything. Just have fun.

Maybe if everybody that caches pays their dues and becomes a premium member maybe Groundspeak can hire more employees to fulfill your wishes.

:laughing:

Tell that to all the people that whined so much about an icon,  that a variation of "locationless" caches was created by Groundspeak.  :D

This is simply your opinion...

The other 2/3rds (when she cached...) was so into "souvenirs" that we didn't cache an entire month when souvenirs that meant nothing to her was created ("31 days of geocaching"), nor did we do any promotions she wasn't interested in. 

 - She asked for "incorrect" souvenirs to be deleted too.

The only thing my PM pays for is FPs and notifications.  We remain PM for members to still play free.

I'd see things that have been taken away replaced, than see more "updates" that don't do a thing to make it easier for me to cache.

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Personally, the Labs I've experienced and it's only been a handful have all been very well done and interesting.  A comment was made earlier about accessibility hit home and I have to admit that never crossed my mind when thinking about the AL's or LA's whatever you want to call them, it's easy to forget that their are multiple types of cachers and they(the Labs) definitely in my mind do serve a purpose by enhancing their experience.  Granted there are areas where Wherigo and Multi's intersect with the Labs but so what?  I like them as well.  I would like to see Wherigo's refined because the quality can really vary depending on the creator.  Can't really speak to Waymarking because I have never done one - not opposed to doing one, it's just never come up.  Now that I hear they are like the discontinued locationless caches, I am going to try to find some - along with benchmarks which is something else new that I just heard about.  I don't like not being able to see the LA's on my pc because it means I have to use two devices if I am planning at home, something I do on my PC.  As a tech consumer professionally, one thing that really does bother mean a lot is when apps/programs/systems are deployed without proper testing or development - there's no quicker way to create negative perception than to do so.  Finally, if somebody wants to cheat - so what? They are just losing out on the fun of actually doing the task.  There's no prize for anything other than the experience - which is the best prize anyway, that and meeting fellow cachers on the trails and sidewalks.

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As a disabled person (not in wheelchair) I go to search for lots of T1 caches that end up not being disabled friendly. To me the Adventure Caches have given me another way of enjoying getting out and about. They also have a lot of interesting facts about them that are missing from 'normal' caches. I don't like the Wherigo's, or the multi's and Earth caches, therefore I don't do them. It's a simple exercise of if you don't like them, don't do them, but don't spoil it for those of us who like doing  them and find it makes a change from having to bend and search for inaccessible cache boxes.

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3 hours ago, The Kent Crew said:

As a disabled person (not in wheelchair) I go to search for lots of T1 caches that end up not being disabled friendly. To me the Adventure Caches have given me another way of enjoying getting out and about. They also have a lot of interesting facts about them that are missing from 'normal' caches. I don't like the Wherigo's, or the multi's and Earth caches, therefore I don't do them. It's a simple exercise of if you don't like them, don't do them, but don't spoil it for those of us who like doing  them and find it makes a change from having to bend and search for inaccessible cache boxes.

A T1 should never, ever be inaccessible from a wheechair. Have you told the COs? They are breaking the rules. Such violations should be reported to reviewers. Do these caches belong to the same CO? Maybe part of "DT bombs"? For the latter, the COs tend to put bad ratings on the caches just to fill the DT matrix. Don't accept it. For most of us COs, we make an effort to verify that a cache is wheelchair friendly before putting a T1 rating on it.

 

What bothers me with ALCs is not that they exist but that they are made in collision course to Lab caches. Imagine if T1 and T5 were changed to be the same thing! Confusing, right? But now they make physical+temporary+potentially hard = virtual+permanent+easy. Makes sense?

 

However, I see nothing in the ALC guidelines that require them to be wheelchair friendly. Unless I am missing something, you should run the same or even greater risk of finding an inaccessible ALC as a badly graded traditional. Right?

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6 hours ago, The Kent Crew said:

As a disabled person (not in wheelchair) I go to search for lots of T1 caches that end up not being disabled friendly. To me the Adventure Caches have given me another way of enjoying getting out and about. They also have a lot of interesting facts about them that are missing from 'normal' caches. I don't like the Wherigo's, or the multi's and Earth caches, therefore I don't do them. It's a simple exercise of if you don't like them, don't do them, but don't spoil it for those of us who like doing  them and find it makes a change from having to bend and search for inaccessible cache boxes.

For the last year I have, sadly, resorted to using my cane. With my inability to climb trees, scale cliffs and otherwise avoid caches with a higher T rating, I've embraced Adventure Labs. I haven't done a lot of them but I have truly enjoyed the ones I have accomplished. I find them to be a really great learning experience that suit me just fine. Of course, I still enjoy traditional geocaching but when I think back on some of the trash I picked through to find another bit of trash with a soggy piece of paper in it, AL's are a welcome change. 

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Once again, i don't there's anyone saying Adventure Labs are bad an universally must go away. That's fine.

The biggest critique is that they are statistically and practically half-way geocaching, in regards to implementation in the website and the activity's relation to 'generic' geocaching.

I'd wager there'd be zero issue if they were entirely their own thing. Maybe, even, a bit more acceptance by people who are critical of this "annoying lab project" ;) (because they could do them without affecting their geocache listing statistics and history in any way)

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