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Collecting Treasures


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Posted (edited)

An excerpt from today's blog post:

https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2025/01/celebrate-25-years-of-geocaching/

 

Celebrate 25 years of geocaching

Are you ready to celebrate 25 years of geocaching? Geocaching HQ has been busy preparing for this milestone, and we’re excited that 2025 is finally here! Our team remains focused on the incredible community of geocachers who built the game from the ground up. Like you, we’re still dreaming up creative caching experiences, bringing people together, and getting outside to explore and find the Treasure hidden all around us.

 

In 2025, cachers can look forward to:

 

Treasures: In March, players around the world will start finding digital Treasure when they log qualified caches, adding to the excitement of cache discovery! The ever-evolving game will have a new feature for you to enjoy!

 

And.....

 

Treasures: a new feature on Geocaching.com and the mobile app

Geocaching is often called the world’s largest treasure hunt. As we kick off the 25th year of geocaching, we’re excited to announce a new feature called Treasures!

 

The digital Treasures feature builds on previous limited-time campaigns you might remember, like the clues from Mystery at the Museum, the passport stamps from Wonders of the World, and the magic items in Signal’s Labyrinth. In those cases, digital treasures were temporary and disappeared when the promotion ended.

 

Starting in March 2025, digital Treasures will be a collectible game feature. Geocachers can collect these digital items by finding and logging caches that meet specific criteria set by HQ for each Treasure collection.

 

As the release date approaches, we’ll provide more details about how the feature works, where to find treasures, and how to share feedback. Stay tuned to the blog and newsletter for the latest updates—we can’t wait to share them with you!

Edited by Max and 99
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Posted (edited)

Personally, I like it.

Lots of blowback out there already about use of developer resources, and other common complaints whenever a new feature is developed - but you know, firstly, there are multiple development departments, so this could be developed without 'taking away' from other essential work; secondly, this is directing attention back to finding geocaches, the real spirit of geocaching. And with an increasing proliferation of small/tiny micro containers out there, this is at least a way to get people out searching for geocaches to still 'find' something, even if it's digital. It's not entering passcodes into an app to claim a "geocache find", eg

 

A couple hurdles I can see though:

* false find logging in order to gather treasures (especially if their locations are pre-known). If not playing for the treasures, it doesn't matter how many someone else or doesn't have, but if you earn them by posting logs, now the 'strategies' some employ could well affect other geocachers

* finding caches only for treasures and skipping out on revelling in physical experiences (like power cachers wanting the smiley instead of enjoying the hike, eg)

eta:

* also, being a game of discovering digital items, those are typically in location-based games that have quickly-recycled 'things' to find or locations to (re)visit, certainly not as long-term as geocache finds in a local area which can quickly be cleared out once found once. Similar effect as now disallowed date-limited challenges between new cachers (with oodles of unfound) and veteran cachers (who may travel great distances for their nearest)

eta:

* another - more potential proliferation of powertrails (love'em or hate'em) by owners who want to provide a smorgasboard of 'qualifying' geocaches to award treasures. I can see 'treasure fields' getting published a massive cache series of varying stats (legit or otherwise) for people to 'mine' for treasures. hm, whether that's good/bad maybe depends who you ask :P

Edited by thebruce0
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Posted
2 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

* false find logging in order to gather treasures (especially if their locations are pre-known). If not playing for the treasures, it doesn't matter how many someone else or doesn't have, but if you earn them by posting logs, now the 'strategies' some employ could well affect other geocachers

* finding caches only for treasures and skipping out on revelling in physical experiences (like power cachers wanting the smiley instead of enjoying the hike, eg)

eta:

 

Yes, from a CO's perspective those points were the first thing that crossed my mind. I wonder if COs will be able to opt out if they don't want treasures in their caches.

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Posted (edited)

When I first read the blog post, my initial thoughts were that this sounds redundant with souvenirs and with the summer promotions. Seemed silly to have another digital token. But after listening to Bryan on the HQ Podcast and on Challenge Talk, it's clear that Treasures have the potential to be much more. It sounds like they will mostly be permanent, not too easy, and will have more flexibility. Souvenirs have completely lost all meaning for me as they've become so common and the summer promotions don't excite me either, but I am looking forward to Treasures. Of course how much I actually care for them will come down to how much HQ develops the feature and builds on them, but I'm definitely excited for what they can be. Will they motivate me to go out and find caches more than I already am from Challenge Caches and of their intrinsic pleasure? I wouldn't expect by much, but maybe at the margins.

Edited by garretslarrity
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Posted

From today's blog post:

The first treasure collections

 

Collection 1: Geocaching origins

This collection pays tribute to geocaching’s beginnings in 2000, when the U.S. government switched off Selective Availability, making GPS technology accessible to civilians.

 

The collection features four Treasures inspired by the early days of the game. To collect these Treasures, you must find and log Traditional Caches.

 

Collection 2: Celebrating 25 years

Once you complete the first collection, you’ll unlock access to the second collection, which celebrates geocaching’s 25th anniversary and the exciting Events planned for 2025.

 

This collection has five Treasures, including a disco ball—also featured in our 25th anniversary design. You can collect these Treasures by finding and logging any type of geocache with a difficulty rating of 1.5 or lower.

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Posted

I'll be the wet blanket and say I'm not a fan... 

There's numerous threads on "missing" Trackables., and many agreed a lot happened when this became the "world's largest treasure hunt", instead of the "language of location".  The idea that newbs looking for treasure, take that shiny bauble as treasure (or a consolation prize...).

With a couple sites talking treasure hunting, just mentioning Treasure (I feel) is an awful idea with new, especially young, members for a simple location hobby.

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Posted

I can't wait for this feature. Most of the caches in my area are boring micros, so it would be fun to have a digital element for finding caches instead of just "Cool I found my 40th bolt cache in my city", and have more excitement. I do wonder what collections they will release first. It will be interesting to see.

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Posted

I was a fan until the collections were announced. Traditional caches? Difficulty 1.5 or below? Those are the most common types of caches... why couldn't it be Mystery caches or caches with a difficulty above 3? It would encourage cachers to find lonely and rarely found caches instead of, well... continuing finding the most common cache types. This is just encouraging more LPH hopping. 

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Posted

While the various digital promotions like Signal's Labyrinth don't really interest me, the fact that Groundspeak has done variation of this promotion for as many years in a row shows Groundspeak clearly thinks they are having the desired effect on encouraging more geocaching or they wouldn't keep doing them.

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Posted
9 hours ago, The_Jumping_Pig said:

I was a fan until the collections were announced. Traditional caches? Difficulty 1.5 or below? Those are the most common types of caches... why couldn't it be Mystery caches or caches with a difficulty above 3? It would encourage cachers to find lonely and rarely found caches instead of, well... continuing finding the most common cache types. This is just encouraging more LPH hopping. 

 

Today I did an 8.4km return hike over moderately steep terrain to hide a new 2/4 mystery cache, which I've just submitted for review. Perhaps I should have read the blog post first and placed a treasurable 1.5/1.5 roadside traditional instead.

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Posted
18 hours ago, The_Jumping_Pig said:

I was a fan until the collections were announced. Traditional caches? Difficulty 1.5 or below? Those are the most common types of caches... why couldn't it be Mystery caches or caches with a difficulty above 3? 

 

This wouldn't make sense for the first collection. These collections are permanent, not a promotion. They will be around for years and every new user who signs up will see collection one first. I think of collections like achievements in a game, and collection one is the achievement everyone automatically gets (ex. open the game). 

 

The first two are probably the easiest collections that will ever be made, I think it's safe to say that every other collection coming out will most likely be more difficult/time consuming.

 

I am also curious what percentage of chance there is to find a treasure. I am pretty sure you get a random one in each qualifying cache, but I wonder if there is also the chance to get nothing or if you can get a duplicate treasure which will not count towards the collection? I also love how you have to complete collections in a sequence, so that will make it take a bit longer. Overall, I think this is an amazing feature and I'm excited. :)

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Posted
22 hours ago, Smilas said:

...so it would be fun to have a digital element for finding caches instead of just "Cool I found my 40th bolt cache in my city", and have more excitement.

 

Hmmm... and the 41st trivial cache (D<=1.5) will then be more exciting?

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Posted (edited)
22 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

While the various digital promotions like Signal's Labyrinth don't really interest me, the fact that Groundspeak has done variation of this promotion for as many years in a row shows Groundspeak clearly thinks they are having the desired effect on encouraging more geocaching or they wouldn't keep doing them.

 

When I read that the themes for the first two collections would be "Geocaching origins" and "Celebrating 25 years", I expected the qualifying caches to be related to those themes, perhaps early caches for the first and community celebration events or caches published in 2025 for the second. But no, it's traditionals and D <= 1.5. It makes me wonder what the point of having themes for the collections is, if it's just about finding lots of easy caches.

Edited by barefootjeff
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Posted

I think it's important to remember that this feature is really geared towards collectors. Completionists. People who like to find things, and make sure they find all of something if there are groups of them. And if some are more rare than others, than incentive to keep going. Even if you've got 157 pebbles, you still want that super rare crystal gem. It's the whole basis of collectibles in retail.

 

And, if they are going to keep pushing geocaching as a form of 'treasure hunt', I'd rather they push it in the direction of digital treasures than physical, implying treasures are to keep, if they aren't going to strengthen promotion on the scavenger/adventure aspects of geocaching first.  If geocaching is a treasure hunt, then here is where the treasure aspect really has value, redirecting the mentality away from the physical swag keep'ems, which should be trade'ems.

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