What's the Difference Between a 4.5 and a 5 Difficulty?

[+Weber_and_Sons]

I know that there difference between 4.5 and 5 terrain is that 4.5 terrain is the hardest it can get without you needing equipment and 5 terrain is where you need equipment (scuba gear, climbing-gear etc..) but what is the true difference between 4.5 and 5 difficulty? I feal like a 4.5  difficulty mystery cache is harder that a 5 difficulty traditional cache and that might just be that they are different types of geocaches but also I feel like if there's a 4.5 and a 5 difficulty of the same type there both equally hard.

This is my first forum post so please give me some feedback on what I could do better.

-Weber_and_Sons

[+The Leprechauns]

Quote

What's the Difference Between a 4.5 and a 5 Difficulty?

 

The answer is, .5.

[+lee737]

Not much.... it's a very subjective call, especially with puzzles.

[+niraD]

8 hours ago, Weber_and_Sons said:

I know that there difference between 4.5 and 5 terrain is that 4.5 terrain is the hardest it can get without you needing equipment and 5 terrain is where you need equipment (scuba gear, climbing-gear etc..) but what is the true difference between 4.5 and 5 difficulty? I feal like a 4.5  difficulty mystery cache is harder that a 5 difficulty traditional cache and that might just be that they are different types of geocaches but also I feel like if there's a 4.5 and a 5 difficulty of the same type there both equally hard.

For many caches, the difference is that a 5 difficulty requires "specialized knowledge, skills, tools, or significant effort to find, solve, or open." This is similar to a 5 terrain requiring "specialized equipment such as scuba gear, a boat, rock climbing gear, or similar."

 

I've seen a 5 difficulty used for elevated caches where the CO expects seekers to use a tool to retrieve and replace the cache. I've seen it used for multi-caches where a tool (e.g., a UV flashlight) is needed to decode the information at each stage. I've seen it used for puzzle caches where programming (specialized skills and tools) is required to solve the puzzle.

 

Before Groundspeak had definitions for the half-star ratings (1.5, 2.5, 3.5, and 4.5 stars), I sometimes saw 4.5 stars used as "5 stars lite", meaning that equipment/tools were needed, but the necessary equipment/tools weren't that hard to use or obtain.

[+hzoi]

I feel many 5 star difficulty caches are overrated, and many 4.5 star difficulty caches are underrated.

 

D5 also seems to be the default setting for far too many challenge caches that are not, in fact, the most difficult challenges out there. Perhaps those COs feel the need to reward folks who complete the challenge with a high rating.

 

I don't want to call anyone out, so I won't, but I'm sure I could find many examples by going through my list of challenge finds.You can certainly see it when you compare these two tables from Project-GC: I have 107 D5 challenge finds, but Project-GC only rates 14 of those in the highest percentile of difficulty. Even if we pretend the 68 challenges I have found are all in Project-GC's top tier of difficulty (and I doubt they all would be), that's still a delta of 25 overrated challenges.

 

Edited November 27, 2024 by hzoi

[+GeoElmo6000]

In my opinion, a 5 terrain cache is most likely easier than a 4.5 terrain cache, if you have the right equipment.  For example, if you have a kayak, it's often not difficult to get to those 5 terrain river caches, whereas a 4.5 terrain cache is usually a difficult climb of some sort.  

 

I have one 5/5 cache that I found, and someone just drove me over in a boat, and I solved a puzzle to get the final coordinates, but if a boat wasn't required, it would have been a 1.5 terrain cache.

 

There are of course very difficult 5 terrain caches that I'll never get to, like SCUBA caches.

[+thebruce0]

On 11/27/2024 at 9:30 AM, hzoi said:

I feel many 5 star difficulty caches are overrated, and many 4.5 star difficulty caches are underrated.

Same with a lot of high Terrain rated caches...

 

On 11/27/2024 at 9:30 AM, hzoi said:

D5 also seems to be the default setting for far too many challenge caches that are not, in fact, the most difficult challenges out there.

Well to be fair, there's not really a universal objective measure. One person might believe that a single fizzy is a true 5 difficulty for them, or in their region. Go there from a place plastered with all DTs and that 5.0 Fizzy challenge is clearly overrated. A newer cacher putting out a challenge cache might not consider such accomplishment as easy and 'overrate' it relative to loads of others in the local community.

Ultimately the rating is up to the CO, and unless we know the CO and the region, it's hard to say whether a cache is 'objectively' (or intentionally) over or under rated...

 

 

For both D and T, I think the jump from 4.5 to 5 could be either an underrating or overrating. For me, a 4.5D puzzle could be very hard, then next to it a 5.0 programming puzzle - that's a step down for difficulty for me, but for someone else without that specialty knowledge, it would be an easy 5.0+ difficulty (unless of course they just ask someone for the solution, which typically happens around here).

 

So I think the 5.0 D or T is a rating all its own, and is hard to classify it universally in relation to the 4.5 rating, because most of the time, that 'specialty' tick (equipment or knowledge) is either going to itself be easy or hard depending on who you talk to.

[+barefootjeff]

59 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

Well to be fair, there's not really a universal objective measure. One person might believe that a single fizzy is a true 5 difficulty for them, or in their region. Go there from a place plastered with all DTs and that 5.0 Fizzy challenge is clearly overrated. A newer cacher putting out a challenge cache might not consider such accomplishment as easy and 'overrate' it relative to loads of others in the local community.

Ultimately the rating is up to the CO, and unless we know the CO and the region, it's hard to say whether a cache is 'objectively' (or intentionally) over or under rated...

 

I struggled a bit setting the D rating for my two challenge caches (GC752YF and GC8DQXK). There are local cachers, particularly those with five-digit find counts, who easily qualified many times over, indeed it's a requirement under the new guidelines that some number of local cachers must already qualify, but there are also some, particularly those who only do low terrain urban caches, who'll likely never qualify. I figured someone targeting those challenges who's starting from scratch and going out caching most weekends would likely take more than a month and less than a year to qualify, so in the end I split the difference and made them D3. Project GC has subsequently rated their difficulty as 46 and 54 respectively so I guess I wasn't too far wrong.

 

There are two D5 challenges locally, one requiring a 365-day streak and the other requiring "FIVE caches with the D/T rating of 5/5, each located in FIVE different (unique) countries. Additionally, at least two caches are to be of Traditional type." Needless to say I'm unlikely to ever qualify for either of those, although the streak one is probably over-rated as it's had 30 finds in the seven years since publication and has a Project GC rating of 70. The other one, published four years ago, has only had two finds and is rated 95 so it's definitely a D5.