Early idea for 2013/2014 race

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fluffyfish
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Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by fluffyfish » 23 December 12 11:17 pm

Since Ingress seems all the rage (not that I play Ingress or know much about it), maybe a team based concept for next year? Two factions? Goals? Can moveable caches create zones owned by teams and convert caches inside into their faction?

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by caughtatwork » 23 December 12 11:36 pm

There used to be a cache in Brisbane that was a North vs. South activity. The longer you kept it in your zone, the higher your points. Interesting idea. How do you work out who's on your team or is it location based? How do the rural folk get involved?

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by fluffyfish » 23 December 12 11:53 pm

Reckon teams should be randomly assigned otherwise too much segregation (local cachers join the local faction?).

The rural cachers is a good point. It would be great to have a summer race fun for those without many players in their area. Quite a difference moving from the Illawarra to Perth, in terms of GCA activity. But that will require many more months of thinking.

However as overheard of the www "caching is the sport for the super sensitive" so any faction based game could promote poor coords, moving and not logging, etc to advantage their faction. Not sure GCA has sufficient numbers to ignore the effect of a "spoil sport".

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by Just a cacher » 26 December 12 1:04 pm

I have been tossing ideas around for the future, as well. I don't have anything, yet, that could be classed as a viable idea, but I have got as far as talking about teams. I am thinking about mixed teams, city and country sort of mixed, I mean. People could team up with cachers they already know, who live in the country, if they are city cachers (for example). My other thought was that we could have a draw: Two hats, so to speak, one with the names of country cachers, one with the names of city cachers, and someone would draw them out and match them up.

I have been trying very hard to come up with something that would not be biassed towards larger centres. I don't think it's possible, but we can weight the games a bit. Making sure we play in teams as mentioned above would be a help.

I sort of imagine a Treasure Hunt game where each team has to 'get' a list of items. I haven't got a list, as such, but I am thinking about "a cache with the name of an animal in its title", and a large number of ideas of that ilk. I think that if the questions are organised in the right way, some of them will be easier for city cachers to find, and others will be better for country cachers. It has already been pointed out to me that this sort of competition might be impossible to verify (answer-wise) by making a programme, but perhaps we could use the honour system?

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by caughtatwork » 26 December 12 4:22 pm

If the teams were randomly selected (and there were more than 2 teams):
Each team could aspire to the highest number of caches found.
Highest average number per cacher in the team (that would mean the regional and rural cachers would benefit from their city team members).
Total distance travelled (maybe from home co-ords to each cache) which might benefit those who have rural cachers in their team if they are willing to chase caches a bit of a distance away, and not benefit the urban cachers where there's a cache just a few km away.
You could play "keeepings off". That would benefit the rural and regional cachers in team as their longer distance caches are likely to stay out of the opposing teams longer.
You could play battleships by moving caches to certain gird co-ords that cover the whole county. If your score a hit, your whole team scores a hit. First one to sink someone elses fleet wins.
Lots of opportunities to get the teams together virtually, even they are 1000's of km from each other.

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by quiet1_au » 26 December 12 10:06 pm

With the discussions of this years race in the forum, I had wondered about how one could prevent unsportsman/person activities. A few things crossed my mind - not sure how viable they would be but food for thought anyway. Penalties for placements where the cache was unretrievable for say a week or two. This fitted in well with a relay race type event where the object would be to move a cache in such a way that it would be able to be moved along quickly, as opposed to moves where caches were stranded far from anywhere/anyone for weeks... Another idea was some sort of scoring system where the hide would be marked in terms of security, ease-of-access, or what have you. I'm not sure that any of these were free from potential abuse - but as a brainstorming exercise something to add to the pot at least :-)

:-$

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by LouiseAnn » 26 December 12 10:36 pm

quiet1_au wrote:Another idea was some sort of scoring system where the hide would be marked in terms of security, ease-of-access, or what have you. I'm not sure that any of these were free from potential abuse - but as a brainstorming exercise something to add to the pot at least :-)

:-$
This could be where the scores are proposed by the hider, and have to be agreed with by the finder.

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by Richary » 26 December 12 11:50 pm

quiet1_au wrote:Penalties for placements where the cache was unretrievable for say a week or two. This fitted in well with a relay race type event where the object would be to move a cache in such a way that it would be able to be moved along quickly, as opposed to moves where caches were stranded far from anywhere/anyone for weeks...
I like that in some ways, the points you get from a cache diminish depending on how quickly it is found again. Say you get 5 points for moving a cache, each day it stays unfound one point goes off the score. It would remove the idea of moving them somewhere remote where they won't get found for a while. And perhaps a similar reward could be given to the finder for finding it quickly as well. More points for a quicker find, though perhaps a bonus score for one that hasn't been found for a week because it has got stuck, to give an incentive to do the drive to wherever it has been left.

It might lead to a more competitive situation which might not be good, though unfortunately it doesn't solve the problem of involving remote cachers where there aren't others around chasing. Still it's food for thought, assuming the coding problems aren't too hard for C@W, given this is all volunteer work on his part.

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by blossom* » 27 December 12 5:19 pm

I like the teams ideas where you are paired up with someone in another state or a city/regional team. And I quite like the treasure hunt ideas too.

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by fluffyfish » 31 December 12 12:46 am

A feature might be where the teams are competitive but can't really influence the outcome negatively for the other team.

A feature that would be positive for rural and non GCA states would be an area based game.

Rough concept is that connected area between 5 caches (polygon). If the cache got moved to a rural area or to WA, QLD or NT then the area would increase substantially. So if one of these caches was in Tassie, WA, NT, NSW and QLD that would be a big area!

Maybe the competitive nature your "area" is only calculated where it doesn't overlap another teams area. Could get quite strategic? Maybe the areas are set on key and random dates to keep people moving them around.

A pre determined number of caches would be set before the event or a limit on how many could be entered by an individual.

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by LouiseAnn » 31 December 12 12:54 am

fluffyfish wrote:A feature might be where the teams are competitive but can't really influence the outcome negatively for the other team.

A feature that would be positive for rural and non GCA states would be an area based game.

Rough concept is that connected area between 5 caches (polygon). If the cache got moved to a rural area or to WA, QLD or NT then the area would increase substantially. So if one of these caches was in Tassie, WA, NT, NSW and QLD that would be a big area!

Maybe the competitive nature your "area" is only calculated where it doesn't overlap another teams area. Could get quite strategic? Maybe the areas are set on key and random dates to keep people moving them around.

A pre determined number of caches would be set before the event or a limit on how many could be entered by an individual.
Tricky, I like these ideas!!

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by caughtatwork » 31 December 12 9:55 am

I like these ideas. The difficult part will be writing the code to determine the points. I'm not sure I have enough talent to do extremely complex calculations.

Another idea based on teams. A cache is placed (it can be any type of cache). If red find the cache then red gets one point. If yellow finds the cache, yellow gets one point. Red finds it again (same team or even team member) and gets another point. Once a team has found the cache enough times (say) 20 points, then that team has "captured" the cache. Other teams can still find the cache, but the points go to the first team to find it 20 times. That would work where there are multiple teams (i.e. more than 2). It does end up removing caches from the game though and that might not work very well. We could reset the count if a team does "capture" it, so it would enter play again and the next team to get to 20 first would "capture" it. Makes the cache available for "capture" multiple times.

Alternatively, the finds keep accumulating and at the end of the game the team with the highest number of points on a cache have "captured" the cache. The actual number of points would be irrelevant. It would be 1 "captured" cache to that team.

Going with the polygon concept, we could divide the continent into 100sqkm zones (i.e. 10km x 10km squares) or even squares of 1 degree of separation. You need to move a cache into one of your coloured zones to get a point. If you wanted another point, it would need to move into a different zone of the same colour. Not sure how to calculate this programatically.

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by Zalgariath » 31 December 12 5:53 pm

Yeah I think next next year a game based on ALL cache types could be great otherwise we are going to end up with 10,000 Movables on GCA and not much else ;)

A Team Points based game could be great. More Ideas....

Players joining the game get randomly divided into 2 (or 3 or 4!) teams and get points Geo-Olympics style for hiding and finding.

Hiding - Like Geo-Sportz, Micro / Trads would be worth little, Large / Multis etc worth more. (Id exclude D/T from hiders points... too easy to fudge)

Finding - Caches would have a base value (based on d/t, size type.... D/T works here as all teams have equal chance of getting the cache, so an artificially high D/T rating could help the opposition as well as your own!) and could gain value over time. Once logged, the points reset to base... this would mean if 3 players on the same team all found a cache on the same day, they wouldnt bump points hugely, and 'helping' your team members by sharing multi or puzzle co-ords isnt going to upset the points too much ;)

This sort of game could work with both new and old GCA caches too, and would include regional players as they get points for their team for hiding... and if their "off the beaten track" caches gain value over time... you'd be thinking there are many nutters here 8-[ who would go out of their way to grab the bonus points for their team! :D

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by caughtatwork » 31 December 12 7:33 pm

Thinking about non-moving caches. A real difficulty will be getting enough logs on any given non-moving cache to be worth while. A moving cache can have many finds and people don't seem to have too much issue with logging a cache more than once as they found it in a location different to where they found it before. A simple traditional will (I expect) only attract a single log from any given player. It also means a greater challenge for those in cache poor areas. i.e. No one else hides in that area. They're screwed.

While I am happy to have moveable caches as nanos, micros, etc, due to their very nature of enjoyment, I would hate, hate, hate to see 700 traditional micro caches go out just for the numbers. I can easily assume that the general caching population (most of whom don't play the game) would not be enthralled by that idea either. A rule could be made that they need to be regular or larger, but then we end up with the issue of people hiding them for the game, getting their prize, archiving them and relisting them on some other website. Not kosher as far as I'm concerned. I know this will happen. It has happened in the past.

My 3 guiding principles for any game are:
Drawing cachers to Geocaching Australia.
Fun for the participants and to create a greater community spirit.
Fun for the observers.

The trouble I see with non-moveables is that the 3rd objective is not necessarily met. A find is a find. Knowing that a moveable cache can be there or not from moment to moment adds to the enjoyment as an observer (and in part as a participant although frustrating when you travel and the damn things isn't there). My opinion is only my opinion though and maybe others see the situation differently.

Static caches means significant travel distances for those in GCA poor areas. The only GCA caches around me are mine. That goes against the 2nd objective. I can easily see people who will hide a cache under a different name, just to get the prizes. People can be extremely competitive (as you have noticed in most of the games). While I would hope that the incidence of this would be low, I know it happens. I have seen it in previous games. People will try and rules lawyer the game to death. It got so bad this year I have been considering stopping running the game in the future. It's only the overwhelming support of those who play the game for fun that I didn't just take my bat and ball and go home.

Using existing caches goes against the 1st objective. If we play with most of the caches already out there, I just cannot see that more people will consider GCA as a viable alternative. After all they didn't do the caches up until the game started, why should they now? Moving caches provide a niche opportunity for people who haven't played with moveables before. Once they see that GCA is not evil, they might stick around.

So the game needs to meet my 3 objectives. It's getting a game with requirements and rules and entertainment and fun that provides the real challenge in getting it underway.

Not to discount anyones suggestions, but you need to think of ways people will circumvent the rules to get a prize and try to avoid creating those loopholes in the first place.

Keep coming up with suggestions. The more ideas, the better the end result.

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Re: Early idea for 2013/2014 race

Post by Just a cacher » 31 December 12 8:00 pm

I don't know what to say. :shock:

Your points all make a lot of sense and I like your objectives. However, I am sad, surprised, and disappointed that we have to think about people 'cheating' or trying to.

I guess we all play the game our own way, but in a competition of any sort, surely one cannot win unless one conforms to the rules of the game? If I cheat, then I am only winning a game I play on my own. I am not better than anyone else at all.

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