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Multiple choice questions


barefootjeff

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I see in this week's newsletter that ALs can now have multi-choice questions with four options to pick from. Up until now we've been told to avoid questions that can be easily guessed but now this appears to go to the opposite extreme. A - nup, B -nup, C - yay!, set the location spoofer to the next waypoint. Unless there's now a limit on repeated guessing, this almost seems to defeat the purpose of having a question.

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48 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

I see in this week's newsletter that ALs can now have multi-choice questions with four options to pick from. Up until now we've been told to avoid questions that can be easily guessed but now this appears to go to the opposite extreme. A - nup, B -nup, C - yay!, set the location spoofer to the next waypoint. Unless there's now a limit on repeated guessing, this almost seems to defeat the purpose of having a question.

That's very interesting. I missed that in the newsletter. 

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Instead of introducing multiple possible answers, so the creator can create a scenario in various languages for example or accept more answers when they're similar like: 1,5 and 1.5, they introduced ABCD question, where you don't even have to read it to answer it correctly at the 4th try maximum. Choosing that over the other possibility is so ridiculous for me I'm speechless.

 

I know it's all about the location and the question should be additional, but what's the point of that? So everybody can pass that question, even when he is at home or is not even paying attention to the story? I think we should not head that way

Edited by sernikk
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Hmmmm.... I could have sworn I've been running to this all along, but you guys clearly agree it's new, so I must be thinking of only Wherigo.

 

In Wherigo, I've been saved a few times because of multiple choice answers. Once, maybe twice, was because the question wasn't well worded, so I could only understand it after I saw the choices. But in a few other cases, the information required was no longer there in the field. I was very happy when the owner designed the trip so that I wouldn't be completely stymied if I couldn't find the one true answer.

 

Sure, some people are going to see the opportunity to be lazy and take it, but what people like that do doesn't really interest me. My priorities go with the person making a sincere effort to answer the questions but can't for reasons out of their control. I don't mind an owner making it hard or impossible to guess a missing answer, but I also don't mind if there's a tool a more lenient owner can use to get seekers over an unexpected glitch. You guys are acting as if GS is forcing owners to use multiple choice questions against their wills.

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3 hours ago, dprovan said:

Sure, some people are going to see the opportunity to be lazy and take it, but what people like that do doesn't really interest me. My priorities go with the person making a sincere effort to answer the questions but can't for reasons out of their control. I don't mind an owner making it hard or impossible to guess a missing answer, but I also don't mind if there's a tool a more lenient owner can use to get seekers over an unexpected glitch. You guys are acting as if GS is forcing owners to use multiple choice questions against their wills.

 

I'm just wondering what's the point of a multi-choice question with four options and unlimited guesses. It would have to be quicker to try each option until you hit the right one than to even read the question, let alone search for the answer. Might just as well do away with the question altogether and simply award the smiley for entering the geofence.

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21 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

I'm just wondering what's the point of a multi-choice question with four options and unlimited guesses. It would have to be quicker to try each option until you hit the right one than to even read the question, let alone search for the answer. Might just as well do away with the question altogether and simply award the smiley for entering the geofence.

The point is that people actually interested in doing the AL will stop and figure out the answer. Other people are just doing the AL for the points, so they won't bother with the process and will just do as you say. Why should the AL owner give a rat's tail about what people that don't care about his AL do?

 

I don't feel the moral indignation about someone cheating to complete a stage without any effort. If they don't want to do any effort, that's their loss. I'm more focused on the person who's engaged and willing to do the work being flummoxed because a sign was removed or a house was repainted (true story). (Of course, this is a much bigger deal in Wherigo where you can't proceed to the next step without answering the current question.)

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12 minutes ago, dprovan said:

I don't feel the moral indignation about someone cheating to complete a stage without any effort. If they don't want to do any effort, that's their loss. I'm more focused on the person who's engaged and willing to do the work being flummoxed because a sign was removed or a house was repainted (true story). (Of course, this is a much bigger deal in Wherigo where you can't proceed to the next step without answering the current question.)

 

The only thing is in the grand scheme it's catering to the lowest common denominator, and feels like it's leading to the writing on the wall.  It's like not fighting "cheating" because "cheaters will cheat", and ultimately the same thing happened to Geocaching Challenges by being so loose about rules and content, they were overcome by noise instead of signal.

 

On one hand I can see why having a multiple choice answer is a nice addition, but on the other hand, it's a vast watering down of the experience. It's one step closer to "tap here to claim the find".  And with so many people almost certainly who are going to make use of this, it's going to flood the playboard with one-tap smartphone finds ... and I'm firmly of the opinion that that isn't geocaching (even considering the virtual-style geocache types we already have - this takes it to the extreme). 

 

I don't care that they exist in that they don't affect me. I do care that it's not even (IMO) remotely like the hobby of geocaching, other than using a smartphone to go to a gps location (and loads of location-based games do that already, to say the least).  That they exist - great, I've done some, and own one. I just really don't want to see them integrated more and more into the mix of geocaches in this geocaching hobby of ours.

 

If they had always remained as another type of Wherigo 'catridge' style tool, I truly think that would have been best. But whatev. I don't hate them, just irked at their implementation into the landscape, and multiple choice (while an understandable feature) is just watering them down even more in that context. =/

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2 hours ago, dprovan said:

I'm more focused on the person who's engaged and willing to do the work being flummoxed because a sign was removed or a house was repainted (true story). (Of course, this is a much bigger deal in Wherigo where you can't proceed to the next step without answering the current question.)

 

If that happens on a waypoint of a conventional multi, you're just as stuck. Ditto if the final of any physical cache has gone missing. It happens, it's part of caching. A few years ago when I was going after D2/T4 caches to qualify for a challenge, I travelled by train about 100km down the coast to where there were five with that rating spread out along a couple of kilometres of coastline, four traditionals and an EC. I got the EC but DNFed the other four. Three of those turned out to be missing and were later archived, the other one I'd just done a Blind Freddy as it's still there and everyone else seems to be able to find it. I didn't seek any get out of jail free in order to get those precious D2/T4 smileys I craved at the time, and if the CO had offered me concessional finds on the three missing ones I'd have declined anyway.

 

I don't see why AL waypoints, sorry Adventure Lab Caches, should be any different if something happens at the location to make the question unanswerable, except of course you can't log a DNF on them. So maybe that's it, AL waypoints/caches have to be guaranteed smileys.

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10 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

If that happens on a waypoint of a conventional multi, you're just as stuck. Ditto if the final of any physical cache has gone missing. It happens, it's part of caching.

Yep, it happens. I'm not worried. I just think it's cool that for this once class of failure, there's a way COs can make the failure survivable if they want to.

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On 3/11/2021 at 10:03 PM, barefootjeff said:

I don't see why AL waypoints, sorry Adventure Lab Caches, should be any different if something happens at the location to make the question unanswerable, except of course you can't log a DNF on them. So maybe that's it, AL waypoints/caches have to be guaranteed smileys.

"Guaranteed smileys" is what people want, a DNF is unacceptable. And given that you cannot even log a DNF for Lab Caches, I'm not surprised that GS wants to decrease the already low-risk for Lab Caches even more.

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I’m not quite sure where the problem is and why some are getting so excited?

 

You don’t have to create an AL with those options; you can just stick to the present system

And with the current system, you always had the option to ask “Is the door red, yellow or blue”?

So, not really different to what we already have.

 

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9 minutes ago, Mausebiber said:

I’m not quite sure where the problem is and why some are getting so excited?

 

You don’t have to create an AL with those options; you can just stick to the present system

And with the current system, you always had the option to ask “Is the door red, yellow or blue”?

So, not really different to what we already have.

 

 

A few months back, all the advice was to choose questions that were unguessable, in fact there's a whole 'nother thread about it here. But now the 4-choice question is the default in the builder so it's how they want owners to frame their questions going forward. Ultimately it creates further disparity between an AL smiley and the rest of the game, and builds an expectation that everything has to be easy-peasy with a guaranteed reward.

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5 minutes ago, Mausebiber said:

All this is done to attract "Geocaching" for more people, a different, easy game which can be played and accomplished by everyone at any time without any effort.

Same reason are the side games like "Wonders of the World" or one souvenir for every day of the month.

 

 

Then it should be a completely different easy game with a totally separate scoring system. Going within tens or hundreds of metres of a location and tapping on at most four possible answers to get a smiley without even having to read the question is far removed from what geocaching ever was.

Edited by barefootjeff
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1 minute ago, barefootjeff said:

Going within tens or hundreds of metres of a location and tapping on at most four possible answers to get a smiley is far removed from what geocaching ever was.

 

Agree, but not you or I are the one to decide what geocaching will be in the future.  Maybe not your or my game any more, but for thousand of new players just waiting to start this Adventure.

I just take the part of geocaching which will fit me needs and my expectations, there are still many cache out there just for me.  :o)

 

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3 minutes ago, Mausebiber said:

 

Agree, but not you or I are the one to decide what geocaching will be in the future.  Maybe not your or my game any more, but for thousand of new players just waiting to start this Adventure.

I just take the part of geocaching which will fit me needs and my expectations, there are still many cache out there just for me.  :o)

 

 

I'm already seeing the effects of this easy game guaranteed smiley mindset amongst newer players, with several PM players who've never visited the website attempting my more difficult caches in the past year and repeatedly messaging me wanting more and more hints. The latest one couldn't even figure out how to read my replies on the app and kept asking the same thing over and over.

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9 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

I'm already seeing the effects of this easy game guaranteed smiley mindset amongst newer players, with several PM players who've never visited the website attempting my more difficult caches in the past year and repeatedly messaging me wanting more and more hints. The latest one couldn't even figure out how to read my replies on the app and kept asking the same thing over and over.

 

I would say welcome to 2021 and Generation Z / Alpha. I assume HQ is just trying to adapt to the situation, which is fine for them, but bad for us all.

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58 minutes ago, sernikk said:

 

I would say welcome to 2021 and Generation Z / Alpha. I assume HQ is just trying to adapt to the situation, which is fine for them, but bad for us all.

 

Yeah, I guess so. I have one cache that's been especially targeted by these never-visit-the-website give-me-more-hints PMs over the past year, a 2/3.5 novelty traditional I placed in 2014 and which currently has 29% FPs. As much as I love that cache, if this keeps going I'm going to have to archive it just for my own peace of mind.

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On 3/11/2021 at 1:03 PM, barefootjeff said:

If that happens on a waypoint of a conventional multi, you're just as stuck.

That's also up to the CO. One thing I've seen are multis with 6 stops for digits and a checksum. If all 6 stops are ok, you use the checksum to check your answers, but if the info at one of the stops is missing, you can use the checksum to discover the missing digit.

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