Contest Feedback
Below is a copy of the email we sent to all players who registered for the Come Out & Play Contest asking for their feedback and input on how we can improve or change the game if we run it again next year. Since a lot of people who did not play followed it on here we thought we’d extend the info gathering to the online audience as well. Please feel free to post here or send us an email with your thoughts, ideas or suggestions. The more feedback we get and information we gather the better we can make the next game. 🙂
“Happy Easter everyone!
Just a quick reminder for anyone who is planning to attend any of the Bye Bye Winter Weekend events here in Fredericton next weekend to post their intentions to attend on the cache pages for each event on GC.com. Posting it on the Facebook page is wonderful but we use the GC.com for our actual counts. Thanks!
I thought I’d take this opportunity to send you all a little Feedback Questionnaire for the Come Out & Play Contest. There were a few glitches and some parts of the original rules/tasks that needed clarification that may have created a few concerns or problems for some players. We’d like your input on how they may have affected you and how you might like to see things done differently if we hold the contest again next winter. Please just copy and paste the questions in your reply and then fill in your responses in the appropriate spots.
1. Was the 4 month duration of the contest too long? Not long enough?
2. Was 20 tasks to be completed too many? Not enough?
3. Do you feel the tasks were too difficult? Not difficult enough?
4. Would you like more tasks that involve hiding caches? Or a contest completely about hiding caches?
5. Any ideas for tasks you would like to see included next year?
6. Was the registration and task submission process on Cache Up NB easy to follow and use?
7. If you registered but did not play is there anything we can or change to help you participate next year?
If you have any other ideas, suggestions, concerns, etc. please include them as well.
Your input and feedback are greatly appreciated! Thanks.
Gwen & Terry”
Alrighty…Feedback here we go…These are MY opinions only so take them however you want.
1) I thought the length of the contest was fine.
2) I thought that having 40 different tasks was too many. I found myself not interested in going through such a large list of tasks. I would have preferred to seen this list at about half of what it was, but that’s just my own opinion.
3) I don’t think many of the tasks were too difficult but I didn’t play this contest much so it’s hard for me to say.
4) I think more hiding would have been better. For myself, and many others I have spoken to, the lack of hiding in this years contest was a bit of a downer. I have my own ideas as to why hiding was a smaller part of the contest but I’d rather not discuss them here. I think for future contests, there should be a better combination of the winter hiding contests and this one.
5) None at this time
6) The online forms worked well for me 🙂
7) I registered, played a little, but did not complete it. I will say that there was one HUGE factor in my lack of desire to participate in this years contest and it had nothing to do with the contest specifics. I found the excessive amount of snow we got here in Moncton to be a bit too much for me to want to get out caching. I found myself very uninterested in going too far with their always being snow coming down. I did the Ice Walk this year and that was about all the caching I got done. I just was not interesting in dealing with that much snow. I’ll also add that even if this had been a typical hiding contest, I don’t think it would have mattered. Too much snow equated to my lack of interest in caching in general, and thusly, my lack of interest in the contest.
I think for what you did milo, it was fantastic, and I am looking forward to the events this coming weekend. I’ve got the wife and kids coming up with me so I hope we have a good time.
Although I know a few people who think otherwise, I think the number of challenges (40) and number of total claims (20) is fine. It allows great flexibility for the players, allowing for variety in claims and points totals. It also makes it nearly impossible for players to predict what the scores of other players are. That being said, some new challenges will be necessary for next year (if the contest is run next year) in order to make it interesting/challenging for all players again.
Ok now it is my turn.
1. length was fine.
2. I would think that less may be easier, not as intimidating in order to get more involved, 20 could have scared a few people off.
3. I think the tasks should be less specific so that more people could play regardless of their numbers, it would make more caches available to fulfill the requirements for those with BIG numbers as they have found many of the area caches already.
4. Yes hiding should be involved and make one of the task find a cache within 4 hours of being published to make it a race to get some new ones quickly.
5. I think we should solicit a bunch of task on here and maybe do a vote online and the most popular get the nod.
6.Yes it was perfect, better than a never ending forum post where everyone can see what everyone is logging.
7. I played but like Zor, I found it to hard to complete with the amount of snow and time needed to plan to get 20.
Great work and it can only get better, Thanks.
You probably do not need to hear from us because we gave our comments when the contest started.
We did not participate because it is not the kind of thing that interests us. Changing the tasks or the number or difficulty would not affect this decision.
We cache fro the pleasure of it and the challenge and dont wanna worry about all the other stuff.
1. The duration of the contest was great. However, not being able to join at anytime was not favorable in my opinion. Also, Cachers who only frequent the geocaching site had no idea about the contest till it was too late I believe. May I suggest having a contest kick off event as this would get around to a larger group of people next time.
2. The amount of task was good I feel. The only difference I would like to see is not having it mandatory. Maybe a cap would be a good idea but if someone can win by only doing 8 so be it (high score only).
3. I think their was a good verity of task and as such one could chose the difficulty… I would like many more but I could also see how that might just overwhelm everybody.
4. A good mix of hiding and finding would be very nice. Encouraging people to hide at least one would be good. Also, by people hiding caches it could have spread the word around by having titles or descriptions mentioning the contest.
5. I would like to see a topic just on ideas and maybe a voting system for finding out those people like the most.
6. I would assume so as I didn’t hear anything negative about it.
7. N/A… However I would like to congratulate everyone who was involved!
Along those same lines as #2 Tetagoucher, how about letting everyone log as many as the claims as they want, without the cap, and taking their top scores for their best 20? It would work for either high or low score, and if tracked via a spreadsheet program, creates little to no additional work for the person(s) running the contest. It also allows a person who “jumps the gun” so to speak-logging a low point cache in haste-to correct their error if so desired.
We would have loved to play this if we had known about it sooner. Hoping it runs again next year.