2014/15 Moveable Challenge/Race
- spatialriq
- 5500 or more caches found
- Posts: 326
- Joined: 12 May 11 11:52 pm
- Location: Perth
Re: 2014/15 Moveable Challenge/Race
Owls ... now that would be a hoot!
- caughtatwork
- Posts: 17017
- Joined: 17 May 04 12:11 pm
- Location: Melbourne
- Contact:
Re: 2014/15 Moveable Challenge/Race
It's not likely that there will be a moving cache race this year.
GCA is still wandering along at around 2% of all geocache finds in Australia when GCA taking up most of the remaining 98%. We're not falling behind, but we're not making headway either. The cache races started off a way to encourage people to get more into GCA, but they seem to have become a thing to do to get a pathtag, then everyone heads back to GC.
The average number of finds for each cache during the game has been decreasing from the very first year at 20 finds per cache during the game to last year where there were only 10.
A number of people have commented (over the years) that the caches clog up their queries, they aren't interested in moving caches, the quality has decreased, the fun has gone out of it, it costs too much in petrol, "my" cache didn't get moved, "so and so" cheated, my cache was trashed, my cache went missing too early, 2 months is too long, 2 months is too short, can we do it in November rather than December, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.
Australia is too large a country to effective run a race. Especially in QLD and NT where there are very few GCA cachers, so any participants there feel they don't get value from chasing down a cache 200km from home which once it gets moved, never moves again. Sydney, ACT, Tasmania are great places for this game. Melbourne somewhat. Adelaide and Perth less. QLD and NT are dead
Basically when something stops being fun, I stop doing it. The game isn't attracting the players to GCA, so while it was an interesting 5 year experiment, I'm not sure it will continue.
I'll see if I can think up something utilising the dragonZone code to leverage more for those who play the game year round at GCA and not just during the "fair weather".
GCA is still wandering along at around 2% of all geocache finds in Australia when GCA taking up most of the remaining 98%. We're not falling behind, but we're not making headway either. The cache races started off a way to encourage people to get more into GCA, but they seem to have become a thing to do to get a pathtag, then everyone heads back to GC.
Code: Select all
Year Year Caches Finds Average
2009 2010 35 683 20
2010 2011 254 4,496 18
2011 2012 504 9,351 19
2012 2013 940 12,307 13
2013 2014 164 1,591 10
A number of people have commented (over the years) that the caches clog up their queries, they aren't interested in moving caches, the quality has decreased, the fun has gone out of it, it costs too much in petrol, "my" cache didn't get moved, "so and so" cheated, my cache was trashed, my cache went missing too early, 2 months is too long, 2 months is too short, can we do it in November rather than December, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.
Australia is too large a country to effective run a race. Especially in QLD and NT where there are very few GCA cachers, so any participants there feel they don't get value from chasing down a cache 200km from home which once it gets moved, never moves again. Sydney, ACT, Tasmania are great places for this game. Melbourne somewhat. Adelaide and Perth less. QLD and NT are dead
Basically when something stops being fun, I stop doing it. The game isn't attracting the players to GCA, so while it was an interesting 5 year experiment, I'm not sure it will continue.
I'll see if I can think up something utilising the dragonZone code to leverage more for those who play the game year round at GCA and not just during the "fair weather".
Re: 2014/15 Moveable Challenge/Race
A sad decision but not unexpected, interest has decreased even in Sydney where moveables had been getting plenty of moves. I don't know how you can increase interest in GCA, there are plenty of great caches but GCA tends to be thought of as something to ignore.
There are a few ardent cachers willing to go out of their way to place and find GCA caches but they are few and far between. If we could find a way to increase the number of good GCA caches around it might help. How to achieve this I don't know perhaps somebody can come up with a brilliant plan.
- ziggiau
- 3000 or more caches found
- Posts: 825
- Joined: 26 September 14 11:13 pm
- Twitter: ziggiau
- Location: Sydney, Australia
Re: 2014/15 Moveable Challenge/Race
I'd love to add some GCA finds but a) there aren't many near me and I don't have the opportunity to travel regularly and b) there are more than enough non-PM GC caches to keep me busy for a long while.
Maybe people value a GC higher than a GCA one?
Maybe people value a GC higher than a GCA one?
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- 10000 or more caches found
- Posts: 1304
- Joined: 05 October 10 10:20 pm
- Location: Australia
Re: 2014/15 Moveable Challenge/Race
Perhaps the fairies time could be better spent getting a new (faster) server organized?