Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

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ikkibrady
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Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by ikkibrady » 21 January 18 12:59 am

I love these ganes as mich as the next person but i feel the way the scoring works leads to the creation of a. A bunch of caches with dt rating higher than they should be. And b. Really trash locationless caches. Just browse through the average dt rating of locationless published during the game compared to thst outside.
Of course this is just my opinion but I was wondering if other people had thoughts on this.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by MavEtJu » 21 January 18 10:25 am

That happened last year too.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by Goldenwattle » 21 January 18 10:42 am

I rarely find locationless caches and the only one I have published was during a game. I don't think much of them.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by caughtatwork » 21 January 18 12:14 pm

This post is not directed at anyone in particular. I'll say that again. This post is not directed at any one person, group of people or their behaviour in the game. This is a post to address the question raised.

We run games for fun. We do not consider having to review every claim, every cache, every log as fun. We leave it to the community to help manage the game spirit in line with the spirit of the site.

Gamers who continually breach the spirit of the game and do not moderate their own behaviour may be banned from future games.

The games take weeks and weeks (in some cases months) of work to set up and if the greater community cannot respect the spirit in which they are run, then we will stop running them.

As far as this game is concerned there are a number of actions that come very close to crossing the line of the spirit of the game and some that stepped over it.

The ones that approach the line will be severely restricted in future games. A little bit of selfishness on the part of a few people to win a token prize will now decrease the fun of future games.

The ones that stepped over the line will not be allowed in any future game. So much for people in cache poor areas. The players with poor community spirit have spoilt the fun for all future games in that respect.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by RebornCyclist » 21 January 18 1:52 pm

I started off thinking the game was a great idea. But as pointed out by the OP, there are caches being created purely to get the points up with D/Ts that aren't appropriate, and a lot of puzzles that are barely puzzles.
There have been 71 "unknown/mystery" puzzles published in Tassie this month (!) which I would normally love, except at least half of them involve simply dumping the text on the page into one of the tools on the Toolbox website (and either the title, description or hint tells you which one). Some you can't dump the text, because they're images - but still telegraphed.
There's a place for easy puzzles - I'm sure plenty of cachers don't get the masochistic pleasure I do from beating my head against something until the answer pops out.
But when the puzzle is purely manufactured to get the cache points up, and the answer given away on the page, it seems to be missing the point somewhat.
Signed,
Grinch

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by J_&_J » 21 January 18 4:15 pm

We always encourage quality hides on Geocaching Australia, especially during our games, as can be read on the SotN home page: http://geocaching.com.au/dragonzone/gam ... fthenation
States of the Nation wrote:Hiding geocaches will also be a large part of the scavenger series, but please remember this is a game of geocaching and geocaches that you hide should be long lasting, be of good quality and you should be proud of what you hide. Please avoid hiding a geocache just for the day so your state can find it before you archive it. Geocaches that exist for a short period of time may result in any claims on that geocache being disqualified. Play creatively, but also play fairly. More geocachers hiding more geocaches makes for more geocaching fun.
If geocachers choose to list easy to solve puzzle caches here, and they are proud of their efforts, then the site admins have no reason to stop them.

As with all previous games, the pro's and con's of States of the Nation will be evaluated and will provide a stepping stone towards future games.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by caughtatwork » 21 January 18 7:23 pm

J_&_J wrote:We always encourage quality hides on Geocaching Australia, especially during our games, as can be read on the SotN home page: http://geocaching.com.au/dragonzone/gam ... fthenation
States of the Nation wrote:Hiding geocaches will also be a large part of the scavenger series, but please remember this is a game of geocaching and geocaches that you hide should be long lasting, be of good quality and you should be proud of what you hide. Please avoid hiding a geocache just for the day so your state can find it before you archive it. Geocaches that exist for a short period of time may result in any claims on that geocache being disqualified. Play creatively, but also play fairly. More geocachers hiding more geocaches makes for more geocaching fun.
If geocachers choose to list easy to solve puzzle caches here, and they are proud of their efforts, then the site admins have no reason to stop them.

As with all previous games, the pro's and con's of States of the Nation will be evaluated and will provide a stepping stone towards future games.
Agree, 100%.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by Goldenwattle » 22 January 18 1:00 am

As a consequence of the competitions and the scoring, I feel that the balance of the newer published caches is out of kilter for what should be; ie traditional caches being the greater numbers, with a sprinkling of (good) multis and (good) puzzles. It appears that mostly puzzles and multis (in that order) are dominating the caches now being published. Perhaps in the future competitions, less emphasise on bigger scores for puzzles and multis would help bring the balance back.
Also, on the scoring, the countryside is being 'littered' with large containers (guilty as the next), when a neat small sized cache would in many cases be better. I can understand giving less points to nanos and micros, but should there be such an advantage to putting out large caches?

Of course this is just my opinion and the final say on scoring naturally goes to those putting the effort into designing the games. And on that, I would like to thank them for all their work =D>. I presume that is CraigRat and caughtatwork. Have I unintentionally missed someone else?

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by caughtatwork » 22 January 18 9:00 am

J_&_J, Chwiliwr and Sol de lune all helped with setting up the game this year as well as the monkey who does the coding. Thanks go to them for their assistance. We will also call for others to get involved in the planning so we can get a greater range of ideas and issues to avoid.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by sirius Tas » 22 January 18 1:02 pm

RebornCyclist wrote:I started off thinking the game was a great idea. But as pointed out by the OP, there are caches being created purely to get the points up with D/Ts that aren't appropriate, and a lot of puzzles that are barely puzzles.
There have been 71 "unknown/mystery" puzzles published in Tassie this month (!) which I would normally love, except at least half of them involve simply dumping the text on the page into one of the tools on the Toolbox website (and either the title, description or hint tells you which one). Some you can't dump the text, because they're images - but still telegraphed.
There's a place for easy puzzles - I'm sure plenty of cachers don't get the masochistic pleasure I do from beating my head against something until the answer pops out.
But when the puzzle is purely manufactured to get the cache points up, and the answer given away on the page, it seems to be missing the point somewhat.
Signed,
Grinch
There are 2 issues there as I see it.
1: The points given for any cache type for games is purely up to the discretion of the games administrators.
2: The puzzles you're refering to imo have been rated accordingly. Not everyone can be bothered to solve D5 puzzles and some geocachers will not even look at a puzzle cache, yet will walk for 2 days to find a traditional/trig cache.
While I'm not the CO....those puzzles were designed to get cachers who normally wont do puzzles to at least have a go and gain confidence in finding there way around the various tools required.
Also a lot of these puzzles would be great for younger cachers for the same reasons.
I thought geocaching was meant to be fun and appeal to all ages and mental capacity.
The games are designed to get more people involved in both hiding and finding caches and enjoy themselves as well....which IMO has achieved exactly that.
At yesterdays Event on Goat Island(also criticised) there were a handfull of kids who had an absolute ball finding the caches out there in some pretty testing terrain and I bet it'll be a day they'll remember for a darn long time.
That for me is why I hide geocaches.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by gooseandegg » 22 January 18 4:37 pm

sirius Tas wrote: At yesterdays Event on Goat Island(also criticised) there were a handfull of kids who had an absolute ball finding the caches out there in some pretty testing terrain and I bet it'll be a day they'll remember for a darn long time.
That for me is why I hide geocaches.
The kids were my kids on the island and they had an absolute blast. Rock hopping, mountain climbing (it was to them), bush tracks, finding secret caves, and splashing through rock pools. We found a mystery cache, a multi cache and a traditional as well as the events. And then there was the food and drink at each event - TIM TAMS too! It was certainly the highlight of their weekend and Sirius Tas is correct, no one in our family will forget it in a hurry.
Last edited by gooseandegg on 22 January 18 6:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by petan » 22 January 18 6:12 pm

J_&_J wrote:We always encourage quality hides on Geocaching Australia, especially during our games, as can be read on the SotN home page: http://geocaching.com.au/dragonzone/gam ... fthenation
States of the Nation wrote:Hiding geocaches will also be a large part of the scavenger series, but please remember this is a game of geocaching and geocaches that you hide should be long lasting, be of good quality and you should be proud of what you hide. Please avoid hiding a geocache just for the day so your state can find it before you archive it. Geocaches that exist for a short period of time may result in any claims on that geocache being disqualified. Play creatively, but also play fairly. More geocachers hiding more geocaches makes for more geocaching fun.
If geocachers choose to list easy to solve puzzle caches here, and they are proud of their efforts, then the site admins have no reason to stop them.

As with all previous games, the pro's and con's of States of the Nation will be evaluated and will provide a stepping stone towards future games.
Something to be considered if distance hides ever accrue extra points in future games is cache maintenance. A visitor to my part of the world (well actually about 30k away from me) hid a number of high terrain/high difficulty caches with 'large' containers. I think I calculated he scored close to 200 points for that effort. If he were local-ish I would say well done. But looking through his profile it suggests that he lives at least 900k away and there is no evidence that he's a regular visitor to the area. I just wondered how he planned to maintain then, or was it expected that these were hidden to gain the points but if they get lost/broken etc then just archive them, if he remembers.

My 2cents worth.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by RebornCyclist » 22 January 18 10:49 pm

I wasn't meaning to criticise the caches, and certainly not the hiders, all of whom I respect.
I just think the scoring system seems to have led to what I'm sure were great traditionals being covered in a puzzle that seems to be there for the points bonus rather than the puzzle.
It's still a great concept as a game, with the various challenges to plan against.

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Re: Discussion topic. Games = trash caches being made

Post by Richary » 23 January 18 8:29 pm

petan wrote:Something to be considered if distance hides ever accrue extra points in future games is cache maintenance. A visitor to my part of the world (well actually about 30k away from me) hid a number of high terrain/high difficulty caches with 'large' containers. I think I calculated he scored close to 200 points for that effort. If he were local-ish I would say well done. But looking through his profile it suggests that he lives at least 900k away and there is no evidence that he's a regular visitor to the area. I just wondered how he planned to maintain then, or was it expected that these were hidden to gain the points but if they get lost/broken etc then just archive them, if he remembers.

My 2cents worth.
A fair suggestion. Perhaps a bonus for distance finds (but not hides) would be in order. While we don't have "holiday" hide restrictions, there is a reason that Groundspeak introduced the rule on their site. And while we are not proposing a ban on distant hides on our site there could be valid reasons not to actively encourage them.

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