quantity over quality

[+Oxford Stone]

This appeared on my local GC Facebook group recently:

 

We are excited to announce a new Adventure Lab cluster and launch event in Wiltshire, at the Leigh Delamere Service Station (M4 junction 17, near Chippenham).

Inspired by Adventure Lab trips to Delft and Assen in Holland, East Leake in Nottinghamshire and of course Winchester, we are building a large group of adventures which can be played from either side of the service station or a layby on a local road. [...] After just a few days of going public, we already have more than 20 adventures promised for launch (of 5 stages each).

 

So people are going to be sitting in their car, not visiting any particular coordinates, and upping their smiley count by at least 100, probably many more. 

 

Isn't it time to just say that Adventure Labs have gone too far and need to be controlled in some way - or preferably just axed altogether? NB I own 2 and want to use my 3rd credit - but it's getting ridiculous. 

Edited January 13 by Oxford Stone

[+Mausebiber]

2 hours ago, Oxford Stone said:

This appeared on my local GC Facebook group recently:

 

I'm not in any Facebook group and if you hadn't posted it here, I wouldn't know at all.

Now that I know, how does it affect me? 

Does it change the way I geocache, do I go to Wiltshire to get those LAB?  Do I care if someone sitting in a car close by and logging all those LAB?  Do I care if someone has 100 or 1000 more points by logging those LAB?

I don't think so.  For me, it's still a game and I play it my way, someone else is playing it their way.

 

[+baer2006]

5 hours ago, Mausebiber said:

I don't think so.  For me, it's still a game and I play it my way, someone else is playing it their way.

I agree that no geocacher should be bothered in any way by people sitting in parking lots and tapping away on their smartphones.

 

But I disagree that we (the geocachers and those smartphone-in-a-parking-lot players) play the same game. Just because someone had the questionable idea to sum up geocache finds and AL "points" (I hesitate to call them "finds") into a single number, doesn't make it "the same game".

[+Mausebiber]

Hi baer2006,

 

I didn't mention geocaching finds anywhere, did I? 

I'm talking about ALs only, and your AL points are exactly the same as anyone else's AL points.

[+baer2006]

1 hour ago, Mausebiber said:

I didn't mention geocaching finds anywhere, did I?

You didn't, because it wasn't necessary. The OP already set up the context by explicitly mentioning a GC Facebook Group.

 

1 hour ago, Mausebiber said:

I'm talking about ALs only, and your AL points are exactly the same as anyone else's AL points.

"The same"? Maybe as in "all count as 1"{*}, but in all other aspects, everybody's AL points are probably much different from anyone else's .

 

{*} Reminds me on the "That still only counts as one!" quote from Gimli in Lord of the Rings .

[+thebruce0]

So, here's my updated thoughts on this...

 

ALs in its current structure have created its own cocoon.  That is, there is one formula for guaranteed success, and anything else produces at the very least a small risk of failure - that is, either in bad reviews or a more generally dying 'style'.

 

By enticing people to 'success' by simply entering a phrase for a smiley, and forcefully providing multiple per 'group' of locations (that is, without alternative; a single adventure, excepting 1-Location ALs), it's become a kind of 'drug' for people loving to collect smileys - and anything that hinders that quantity and speed is not the desirable experience (in a general sense).

 

So... all that needs to happen for the best chance at success is unlock questions, and find quick answers.

 

If you put any information needed outside of that question (instructions or a component to the question/puzzle) you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

If you make the question any more difficult than either multiple choice or an easy visual spot or a general knowledge question, you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

If you make the answer take any more than a few seconds or maybe a minute or two to answer, you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

If you don't make it clear there is nothing physical to find, you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

 

If you have to disclaim any and all of these in the intro text to the Adventure, then the status quo is lowest common denominator or you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

If you don't disclaim in every location to read the instructions in the intro to the Adventure, then you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

 

In essence, the simple/easy and status quo AL is a simple, plain, straightforward, question-only-needed, quick-fix smiley "Adventure". Anything beyond that takes effort and a thick skin to even want to keep active, let alone create, if the responses keep coming back critical because something "wasn't clear" even though it was clearly instructed.

 

Now maybe it's regional, and a local community is generally demanding of quick-find smileys, while other regions understand what a puzzle is. But people don't generally understand that there is no rating or properties to an AL so if you don't get it right away it probably means you're missing something - not that it's automatically the fault of the CO for making a bad AL.

 

And the more creators who want to provide an experience more than a smiley quick-fix get discouraged for doing so, the fewer will be made, and stronger the 'status quo' gets - which is exactly why we are seeing the proliferation of couch-caching 100x+ AL geoarts at airport, for one.

 

Is there a way to fix this mentality?  Because it would be awesome to be able to use the platform to craft actual immersive and creative experiences and have that understood from the start.

 

You don't have to find every cache, we say. Some require work or skill or time or effort.
Well, you don't have to claim every AL smiley in 4 seconds. Some are there for a different kind of 'fun' and don't deserve criticism merely because you didn't like that it wasn't a quick-fix.

 

On the flipside, of course, if you make something that isn't 'enjoyable' by 90%, you need a thick skin to accept some criticism; that's basically a marketing/promotion/creator fact of life.

If you want to try thinking outside the box, you need a thick skin to accept failure or that something just doesn't work.

 

So this isn't so much about legitimate failed bad ideas that need improvement; every creator has to face that =P It's more for having to face criticism for strictly doing something as described above - negative response due to preferences for content that different from the status quo that the system itself is designed to encourage.

(let's not even touch criticism and bad reviews for bugs that are out of the creators' control :P)

 

Much potential in the platform and concept.

But its structure and community points to the quick-fix quantity-over-quality smiley count as the "success" story. And due to that, creators who want to do not-that generally feel discouraged from doing so, resulting in fewer of the latter, and more of the former, an endless cycle to the former.

 

/soapbox

 

ETA: because I know someone will say it, I'm not saying that there are no ALs that do the latter and are successful. But there are so many factors needed for that to happen, which is why I say the structure points in the direction the platform in general is being led. The narrow way is hard, the wide easy way is where people want to go.

Edited September 15, 2024 by thebruce0

[+baer2006]

56 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

If you put any information needed outside of that question (instructions or a component to the question/puzzle) you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

If you make the question any more difficult than either multiple choice or an easy visual spot or a general knowledge question, you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

If you make the answer take any more than a few seconds or maybe a minute or two to answer, you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

If you don't make it clear there is nothing physical to find, you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

 

If you have to disclaim any and all of these in the intro text to the Adventure, then the status quo is lowest common denominator or you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

If you don't disclaim in every location to read the instructions in the intro to the Adventure, then you risk frustration and annoyance and bad reviews.

None of this is any problem, if the AL creator does not want to "appeal to the masses". I am about the create an AL, which would have a D5 rating, if D-ratings for AL were a thing. I admit that I couldn't care less about players, who are annoyed or frustrated, when they choose to not read the clear warning I give in the introductory page of the AL.

[+barefootjeff]

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

ETA: because I know someone will say it, I'm not saying that there are no ALs that do the latter and are successful. But there are so many factors needed for that to happen, which is why I say the structure points in the direction the platform in general is being led. The narrow way is hard, the wide easy way is where people want to go.

 

In HQ's "Update on Adventure Lab platform vision" post in March 2021, they said:

 

Quote

We encourage Adventures to contain compelling narratives, for their stages to share a common theme, or for them to unfold in a sequence defined by the content creators. Adventure Lab aims to provide creators with a broad toolset that allows them to create the type of Adventures that they wish to create and to tell the stories they wish to tell. We believe that providing more choices will ultimately result in a broader and better array of Adventures for people to play. Each Location (or stage) of an Adventure is a component of the story the creator is trying to tell and it is in the spirit of Adventure Lab to protect the Adventure creator’s narrative. For this reason, it is intentional that we are only showing Adventure starting Locations on the app map. 

 

Curiously, though, everything they've done since then seems to be pushing in the opposite direction, away from each Location of an Adventure is a component of the story the creator is trying to tell and towards each location is a stand-alone quick-and-easy smiley. Things like multi-choice answers with unlimited guesses, which means you don't even have to get out of your car if you can park within the geofence, and the ability in the app to easily jump from whatever Adventure you're currently doing to any stages of other ones that happen to be nearby, are a couple that come to mind.

 

Locally, ALs are essentially dead. The last new one to appear in this region was over two years ago in June 2022, and my own four rarely see any activity now. Maybe that's because this region is a backwater rural/suburban coastal area that doesn't have much in the way of historic buildings, public artworks and the like, and most of the interesting and scenic places either don't have anything to ask unambiguous questions about or don't have adequate phone coverage. As a result, the typical AL is just go to this location, find a sign and key in a number, word or phrase from it, or count the number of posts, steps or whatever. These were fun when ALs first appeared here in the second half of 2020, but the rinse-and-repeat nature of most meant the novelty soon wore off. If you make things too easy, they quickly stop being interesting.

[+thebruce0]

1 hour ago, baer2006 said:

None of this is any problem, if the AL creator does not want to "appeal to the masses". I am about the create an AL, which would have a D5 rating, if D-ratings for AL were a thing. I admit that I couldn't care less about players, who are annoyed or frustrated, when they choose to not read the clear warning I give in the introductory page of the AL.

Oh I completely agree. That's the "thick skin" element. You have to not care about reviews and ratings, or people who choose not to do them purely based on what they read in reviews and ratings.

 

5 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

Locally, ALs are essentially dead.

Yeah here they are alive and well, with many people (even in geocaching) who love the numbers. Creativity gets as far as additional content in the AL, though not necessarily required to answer questions; meaning many people just go to the question and answer it for the quick fix. *shrug*

[+thebruce0]

Another illustration could be escape rooms. Many people love escape rooms, love challenging thought puzzles. They opt in to play an escape room, and know what they're getting (and they typically have time/difficulty ratings). Adventure labs are less focused; they can be escape-room-level difficult or couch-logging multi-choice. I've seen people though who may love puzzles still be annoyed when an AL is puzzlingly difficult. Why?

I think the AL expectation - which evolved to its current state by itself - is quick-and-simple.  So people who opt in to play an AL don't expect and thus aren't ready or willing to spend time or brain power when they just expect and want a quick smiley.  As bear said, if they had the option for a difficulty rating of some kind that can certainly help to shape expectations and choice on a case-by-case basis, without having to read a likely-non-existent disclaimer in the intro text =/

[+barefootjeff]

9 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

As bear said, if they had the option for a difficulty rating of some kind that can certainly help to shape expectations and choice on a case-by-case basis, without having to read a likely-non-existent disclaimer in the intro text =/

 

Yep, I had someone complain about one of mine that involves a 5km hike with 160 metres of elevation change, saying that because ALs don't have D/T ratings they should all be 1/1. I said in the description that, if it had a terrain rating, it would be a 4, but now the app only shows the first few lines of the description and you have to tap on "More" to see the rest, which most people won't do.

[+Oxford Stone]

Interesting feedback, thanks. (the FB group I referred to is a local cachers' one, not an official one)

 

Stats on the 2 I own:

 

61-90 mins 4.8* (22 reviews) - 9 FPs on the bonus, 45%; 61-90 mins 4.9* (13 reviews) - 4 FPs on the bonus, 44%. So I'm quite pleased with that. 1st involves a walk of a couple of miles around birdwatching sites (reservoir and river Thames), second is around my town. One person moaned about the walk but then claimed it was tongue-in-cheek... the third one will be along the Oxford Canal with some interesting bridges, signs etc.

 

Both have bonuses, neither are sequential (picking up on local feedback). For both you have to answer a question to get numbers for the bonus coords (rather than just "that's right, it says WATER on the manhole cover, A=1") - for example D= number of letters in US state of twin town on sign (Richmond, VA).

 

I quite agree with the "each to their own" sentiment above, but I think the proximity rule of "real" geocaches should have been applied to adlabs. (Hard for Megas etc, I know...)

 

 

[+geodarts]

The number of ALs is taking the adventure out of them.  
 

I used to play another location based game that was based on finding where a  photo was taken, working within a defined area, and posting a new picture of the spot.  It was fun when the numbers were relatively small.  However there was not anything to limit the number of locations that could be used.  And if anything could become a game piece the quality soon started to degrade. 
 

It confirmed to me that people lack self control.  
 

Issue a single credit and fence off areas in some way to prevent over saturation.  And provide for an offline mode to encourage the Adventure side of the labs.  

Edited November 10, 2024 by geodarts

[+thebruce0]

Theoretically, yep, the proliferation of ALs may well overshadow the number of geocaches.

[+Goldenwattle]

Personally, I am travelling right now and have been for three weeks. I have only bothered with one AL during that time. I was somewhere with a dearth of caches, so after I found the only cache that fitted in with my walk, I found the AL.

The previous ALs to that I found was sitting in an airport, because there were no caches there to be found, after I found one cache. 

I don't mind ALs for people who want an easy thrill, but I wish the number of AL finds were kept separate from real caches. I look at geocachers with high find numbers and I do wonder if they got those numbers by targeting easy to find ALs (especially clusters of them), or actually put in effort. Even drive by caches involve more effort than many ALs. ALs are taking the shine off the game for me.

[+barefootjeff]

1 hour ago, Goldenwattle said:

I don't mind ALs for people who want an easy thrill, but I wish the number of AL finds were kept separate from real caches. I look at geocachers with high find numbers and I do wonder if they got those numbers by targeting easy to find ALs (especially clusters of them), or actually put in effort. Even drive by caches involve more effort than many ALs. ALs are taking the shine off the game for me.

 

I don't pay much attention to other players' stats but I do care a bit about my own, particularly milestones, so early in the piece when I noticed even my small number of AL finds were excessively distorting my find stats, I decided to "delete" them all from the website so they're effectively a separate game for me. It can be a bit cumbersome, though, having to manually delete each stage after completing an AL, so what I'd really like to see is an option provided for players to either count every stage as a find (as happens now), have only completed ALs count as a find or have them not count at all.

 

Around here it's quite the opposite situation to that which prompted this thread. This region (the NSW Central Coast) has a grand total of twelve ALs, with the most recent appearing in mid 2022. Most were created in the latter half of 2020 and early 2021, but since then it's been practically dead. Even players are few and far between now; three of my ALs have had five reviews this year and the other only one.

 

By contrast, this year has been a good one for regular cache placements, with 62 new caches so far compared to just 25 in the whole of last year. They've covered a wide range of hide styles, from urban guard rail micros to bushland trails, some higher terrain hikes and a few kayaking ones. The breakdown is 51 traditionals, 5 multis, 2 mysteries, 2 LBHs, an EarthCache and a virtual, with container sizes being 22 micro, 32 small, 5 regular and 1 large.

[+barefootguru]

On 11/12/2024 at 10:02 AM, Goldenwattle said:

Personally, I am travelling right now and have been for three weeks. I have only bothered with one AL during that time. I was somewhere with a dearth of caches, so after I found the only cache that fitted in with my walk, I found the AL.

The previous ALs to that I found was sitting in an airport, because there were no caches there to be found, after I found one cache. 

I don't mind ALs for people who want an easy thrill, but I wish the number of AL finds were kept separate from real caches. I look at geocachers with high find numbers and I do wonder if they got those numbers by targeting easy to find ALs (especially clusters of them), or actually put in effort. Even drive by caches involve more effort than many ALs. ALs are taking the shine off the game for me.

 

There's a few players in our community who don't even visit the AL locations, they just armchair log by hacking the system.  An easy way to get your Feb 29th badge.