Welcome Back Challenge Caches

Well they are back.  I have really liked challenge caches.  I know some of you do not, but I enjoy setting goals and working towards them.  They are something that I do not dive into a ton, but I do like to have something to work towards other than the next number.  I would rather go find 7-8 caches that are interesting, than grab 200 for the next milestone.

Changes

Must qualify

Now you actually have to meet the challenge before placing.  I am not a big fan of this, but it helps the reviewer know if it is just a crazy challenge or not.  Meh, I can live with it.

Checker

You have to have a checker from project-gc.com I am not a huge fan of project gc, but I don't hate it.  I wish they had allowed GSAK as well.  However I understand that they do not want people to have to download anything.  Hopefully new online checkers will arise. 

No more Alphabet Soup

One of the most notable changes is caches based on titles and GC codes will go away.  These made up a lot in my area.  They are easily changed, manipulated, caches are placed to foil them, owners try to not include caches placed after.  It just became an appeals mess, and a logistical nightmare if you were following many. I will miss them, but apparently many will not.

No more puzzles to find them.

They need to be at the coordinates, or have a visible waypoint.  Not a huge change, but new.  I hated the hidden ones, or the ones that you have to contact the owner.  They seem to never respond.

One Year Streak Limit

I did this locally anyway, but I know there is one for a three year streak out there somewhere.

No More Blackout Challenges

No more caches based on you getting every cache in an area.  Another one I hated.  One hard or missing cache and you were stuck.  It encouraged people to try and get those archived.

Find Dates

You cant start a challenge at a specific date. Every find must count.  That may leave out those that have found a lot. They may have found all the caches needed.

Summary

Well, thats it for how. I will see about more later after I get questions and think some more.

Say Hello to Geocaching Challenges

Well we can say welcome to the new Geocaching Challenges.  After months of waiting and seeing what is in store we can now see the advent of the new system for handling Virtual type challenges.

What are they?

People will get them confused with challege caches.  Where there is a cache waiting at the end of the trail.  Try and meet a certain challenge and then sign the log.  However geocaching challenges are different in a few ways.  You are challanging someone to Perform an action at a particular location, or to take a photo at a particular location.  There will be a third type that groundspeak forms known as a worldwide challenge.  Perform some action anyway in the world.  (think locationless caches).

Differences you can see

The first thing that you will notice is on your profile page that your finds, hides and challeges are all broken out under your name.  And if you hover your mouse over challenges you see the challenges that you have accepted, completed and created.

It is a good idea so people can break down those things seperatly.  Some cachers do not want their finds "polluted" by the find count from the challenges. So this lets them see those numbers without them being combined

The next thing that pops is on your personal page that everyone can see.  This time you will see three numbers again, Those that you have found, trackables, and challenges completed.  Similar to the other without the caches placed, now you see trackable info.

I created a few challeges, but the bugs and the up and down of the website keeps me from writing more.

I will follow up soon with more info.

Update on 2011-08-18 21:02 by firennice

Introducing Geocaching Challenges - Sort Of

Well someone threw it out on the forums, so I thought I would throw a little bone out here.  This new geocaching.com update added some of the backbone for the challenges/virtual system, and some forum discussion is going on about it.

http://www.geocaching.com/my/challenges.aspx

I know they have spoken about it at a couple of events, but I really do not know what has been discussed.  Without knowing what can and cannot be discussed I will stop my personal discussions here.

Here is a clip from Jeremy Irish:

In the UserVoice updates I never said that virtuals were coming back in their previous form, but instead something would be available that should capture the interest in virtuals without the baggage (such as the subjective review process).

To me, this is the most exciting project that we've worked on in years, but it will take some time to iterate through the idea and I know we'll get some things wrong, but the framework is solid. We'll be investing a substantial amount of effort with this project moving forward.

Some points:

• It will be on Geocaching.com, not a new web site. It will be a separate section in the beta, but I expect it to be integrated into a joined search at some point.
• Currently they will not go towards your find count, but it might at some point. It won't at the beginning though.
• It will be a visible statistic, so you will see them on the profile, on the logs, etc.
• We'll be hopefully launching with mobile applications to compliment the activity. I expect that the majority of participants will be using smartphones, but we will have components (Pocket Queries, GPX file downloads, etc) for traditional GPS devices.

So that is what I have to share.  Some who went to Mega Events might want to share info that you have heard.  

My GUESS as to the release.  End of the month, I would also think at the same time all the phone apps will be upgraded to them as well.

Update on 2011-08-06 17:02 by firennice