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Double premium membership


Roman!

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First off since it's double premium it should cost double: $60/year.

 

Since ordinary premium membership makes it easier to find premium only caches even though non premium members can find and log them through a bit of extra work wouldn't it make sense to offer double premium membership?

 

The point of paying is to make finding caches easier so what double premium membership would get you is final coordinates for all puzzle and multi cache. This would be a simple way for those that do not enjoy solving puzzles or visiting multiple waypoints to find one cache and option to find caches that were not feasible for them while those that enjoy puzzles and multis would not be affected and would not need to pay more.

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I like the way you're thinking, although we should try to come up with a catchier name.

 

I don't care so much about getting finals for puzzles and multis, however, I AM in favor of a new membership that turns annoying Challenges into traditional caches.

 

Like platinum membership?

 

Actually it doesn't matter what its called or what the perks are, I just want options to not do stuff I hate doing like spending hours on a computer trying to figure out what a CO was thinking at a specific point in time. Was he/she drunk? Did he/she just get lucky? Was he/she just fired? Did he/she just cheat on their mate and got caught? Is he/she a homicidal maniac? I don't know and don't want to know, why do I have to know to find a cache?

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In all fairness, Groundspeak hasn't risen the price of Premium Membership since it first started 12 years ago but have added many more features.

 

Myself, I wouldn't mind seeing a "Platinum Membership" at $50 per year that would include upgrades like 5,000 cache pocket queries, more filtering options (by name for example), and allow last 20 logs instead of 5 to be in the pocket queries, and raising the limit to the amount of queries you can run in one day.

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I like the way you're thinking, although we should try to come up with a catchier name.

 

I don't care so much about getting finals for puzzles and multis, however, I AM in favor of a new membership that turns annoying Challenges into traditional caches.

 

Like platinum membership?

 

Actually it doesn't matter what its called or what the perks are, I just want options to not do stuff I hate doing like spending hours on a computer trying to figure out what a CO was thinking at a specific point in time. Was he/she drunk? Did he/she just get lucky? Was he/she just fired? Did he/she just cheat on their mate and got caught? Is he/she a homicidal maniac? I don't know and don't want to know, why do I have to know to find a cache?

 

There are many who believe that to solve puzzles you need to be a puzzle expert, and being a mind-reader is a major plus. Puzzle gurus don't publish easy puzzles because they think they are lame.

 

However I vote against the original idea because puzzles and multis are what they are. You do them or skip them, but you don't buy a cheat sheet for them (at least not from GS).

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First off since it's double premium it should cost double: $60/year.

 

Since ordinary premium membership makes it easier to find premium only caches even though non premium members can find and log them through a bit of extra work wouldn't it make sense to offer double premium membership?

 

The point of paying is to make finding caches easier so what double premium membership would get you is final coordinates for all puzzle and multi cache. This would be a simple way for those that do not enjoy solving puzzles or visiting multiple waypoints to find one cache and option to find caches that were not feasible for them while those that enjoy puzzles and multis would not be affected and would not need to pay more.

 

Good idea.

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In all fairness, Groundspeak hasn't risen the price of Premium Membership since it first started 12 years ago but have added many more features.

 

Myself, I wouldn't mind seeing a "Platinum Membership" at $50 per year that would include upgrades like 5,000 cache pocket queries, more filtering options (by name for example), and allow last 20 logs instead of 5 to be in the pocket queries, and raising the limit to the amount of queries you can run in one day.

 

I've long been an advocate of " Platinum " membership with perks as above and more.

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[quote name=kunarion' ti

 

estamp='1409406808' post='5421270]

a catchier name.

Two possibilities:

 

"The Alchemical Deacons of the Tarnished Rose"

from http://random.zebby.org/orders4/index.php

 

or

 

"The Covenant of Diseased and Forgotten Reality TV Stars"

from http://www.chimpage.com/secret.html

These generators are good because they'll save Roman! from working, which is a high priority. ;)

 

I spun the dials and got:

 

The Faith of the Wrinkled Babel of The Legions.

 

Do I support these shortcuts of the "double premium" memberships? Nevaaaaah! It's a symptom of moral decay, weakness and general laziness in societies of the developed world! ;):o

Edited by wmpastor
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I don't know and don't want to know, why do I have to know to find a cache?

 

You don't. You live in the same area as I do and there are new *traditional* caches being published every day. I don't really see the problem. Ignore the puzzles and go get those ones. :unsure:

That's not easy enough for Roman! If possible, he'd like to send his butler to find nitty-gritty caches (3/3 & higher). He'd experience the find via images while sipping martinis at home! :rolleyes:

 

And the rest of you wimps seem to feel the same way! :laughing:

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I like the way you're thinking, although we should try to come up with a catchier name.

 

I don't care so much about getting finals for puzzles and multis, however, I AM in favor of a new membership that turns annoying Challenges into traditional caches.

 

Like platinum membership?

 

Actually it doesn't matter what its called or what the perks are, I just want options to not do stuff I hate doing like spending hours on a computer trying to figure out what a CO was thinking at a specific point in time. Was he/she drunk? Did he/she just get lucky? Was he/she just fired? Did he/she just cheat on their mate and got caught? Is he/she a homicidal maniac? I don't know and don't want to know, why do I have to know to find a cache?

 

With a regular premium membership you just create a pocket query that excludes puzzle caches. Problem solved.

 

If you really don't want to solve puzzles you could always offer the owner some money for the answer. Or you could just ignore them. Ignoring them seems to be the standard answer for people who dislike micros, nanos, power trails etc.

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In all fairness, Groundspeak hasn't risen the price of Premium Membership since it first started 12 years ago but have added many more features.

In equal fairness technology and capability has improved many fold as well as technology costs have plummeted, and yet the website and backend database design lag behind...and many users are forced to use creative laborious processes and 3rd party software to meet their needs...

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Roman is on the right track but the wrong model.

 

Membership needs to be iTune modeled and you pay per cache download. Puzzles and Multi's come with final coordinates (for a premium fee), Earthcaches come with answers (for a premium fee), and webcams come with photo shopped pics (for a premium fee).

 

You could also buy proxy finds and logs to get those desirable dated souvenirs...

Edited by MKFmly
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I'd pay up if Double Premium included plain text emails.

(No, I will not let it go...)

+10

+10 only if you're on the $10/quarter subscription plan. Otherwise it is +30 :ph34r:

 

But let's not encourage Groundspeak to take away existing features, and offer them back at a higher price. Not that I think they'd do it. But if you're willing to pay for plain text email, I'm sure someone can run a filter service to convert the HTML to plain text for you.

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Roman is on the right track but the wrong model.

 

Membership needs to be iTune modeled and you pay per cache download. Puzzles and Multi's come with final coordinates (for a premium fee), Earthcaches come with answers (for a premium fee), and webcams come with photo shopped pics (for a premium fee).

 

You could also buy proxy finds and logs to get those desirable dated souvenirs...

 

How much for a locationless find? I always wanted to log the one with the souvenir pennies.

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Well, since you claim to want "serious" discussion of this "important topic", I'll respond as though I think you're being serious.

 

First off since it's double premium it should cost double: $60/year.
So far, so good. You've got an idea for a "double premium" level of membership that offers additional benefits, for an additional cost.

 

Since ordinary premium membership makes it easier to find premium only caches even though non premium members can find and log them through a bit of extra work wouldn't it make sense to offer double premium membership?
You say that as though the purpose of premium membership is to make it easier to find PMO caches. I've heard different premium members express different views of what the key benefits of premium membership are, but I can't say that access to the cache pages of PMO caches has ever been high on the list. PQs, sure. Instant notifications, sure. Full API access, sure. But access to PMO cache pages, not so much.

 

So maybe double premium membership could allow someone twice the PQ quota. They can do it already by buying a second membership, but then the find history of the two accounts is not linked.

 

Or maybe they could have faster/better instant notifications. Maybe the double premium members would go to the head of the queue, so they all get their instant notifications before the system starts sending the single premium members any notifications. (This might become an "arms race" in areas with a lot of aggressive FTF hounds.) Or maybe double premium members could get their notifications from a faster, more expensive server with more bandwidth.

 

Or maybe double premium members could have access to more stats, or could have higher API limits, or could have better maps.

 

But no, subverting multi-caches or puzzle caches or letterbox-style LBH caches is not a good double premium membership benefit. For one thing, it violates section 2.D.xxiii of the terms of use by publishing puzzle cache solutions "without consent from the geocache owner."

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Silly me for thinking for just one thread we could all be serious and on topic especially for such an important topic.

 

Somehow I find it difficult to believe that your suggestion is fully serious. Note that the cache owners are the those that hide caches, not Groundspeak. Groundspeak cannot sell the coordinates as this affects the work of the cache owners. If they ever would give away the coordinates (what I do not believe) the cache owners that care would add locks to their caches that can be opened only when knowing the code.

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Silly me for thinking for just one thread we could all be serious and on topic especially for such an important topic.

We *did* get serious for TWO important threads -- the RR thread & the GeoLeech thread-- and look where that got us!

 

The RR thread devolved into nitpicking hairsplitting of the legislative history and intent of the rules. (Hello! Everyone wants safety & respect for private property! RR's & GS both.)

 

The GeoLeech thread saw 131 caches archived by the CO when we couldn't talk him back off the ledge.

 

So the quota of seriousness is used up.

 

But seriously, I don't like *parts* of the idea (effortless solutions) & I stated that earlier:

However I vote against the original idea because puzzles and multis are what they are. You do them or skip them, but you don't buy a cheat sheet for them (at least not from GS).

Edited by wmpastor
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Why even bother? Just log everything as found. Problem solved. There, I just saved you $60 a year :ph34r:

I'm not German.

You could give them a home address in Germany. Then you would have to pay 30 EUR per year which is roughly 40 US$ at the monent. There, your wish is fulfilled. That's the standard European Premium Membership, which is clearly more elite. You are officially allowed to armchair logging then (you knew this before, don't you?).

 

Please send 20 EUR (26.3 US$) for consultation fees. Thank you very many for using our service.

 

[bTW: the 30 EUR = 40 US$ thing isn't a gag, it isn't even funny, it's how europeans really are treated by Groundspeak]

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As a cache owner who does a high percentage of premium caches..... We do them to limit traffic as most of these are cemeteries and for many that was a condition of having them there..we would bite on a costlier membership to be able to get bigger pocket queries along with more per day and more logs.

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Why even bother? Just log everything as found. Problem solved. There, I just saved you $60 a year :ph34r:

I'm not German.

You could give them a home address in Germany. Then you would have to pay 30 EUR per year which is roughly 40 US$ at the monent. There, your wish is fulfilled. That's the standard European Premium Membership, which is clearly more elite. You are officially allowed to armchair logging then (you knew this before, don't you?).

 

Please send 20 EUR (26.3 US$) for consultation fees. Thank you very many for using our service.

 

[bTW: the 30 EUR = 40 US$ thing isn't a gag, it isn't even funny, it's how europeans really are treated by Groundspeak]

 

Uh, didn't you mean that how Europeans are treated by their government, the European Union, that imposes the VAT?! Oh, that's right, that's covered in another thread. Feel free to bump it.

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Silly me for thinking for just one thread we could all be serious and on topic especially for such an important topic.

 

Yes, and I'm simultaneously working on convincing the hacker group "Anonymous" to allow double premium access to the contents of everyone's hard drive for $60. If that doesn't work, perhaps the NSA might be interested.

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So maybe double premium membership could allow someone twice the PQ quota. They can do it already by buying a second membership, but then the find history of the two accounts is not linked.

 

Possibly, but why anyone would need more than 10 queries per day when each query can contain 1000 caches is a mystery. If you feel the need to download more than 10,000 caches every day perhaps there's a better way of addressing the need.

 

Or maybe they could have faster/better instant notifications. Maybe the double premium members would go to the head of the queue, so they all get their instant notifications before the system starts sending the single premium members any notifications. (This might become an "arms race" in areas with a lot of aggressive FTF hounds.) Or maybe double premium members could get their notifications from a faster, more expensive server with more bandwidth.

 

Possibly, but hard to see anyone paying for it. But then I'm not a hardcore FTF hound, so maybe they would.

 

Or maybe double premium members could have access to more stats, or could have higher API limits, or could have better maps.

 

Stats might be nice. Higher API limits would make more sense, but even then it's hard to see why people would need more than 6,000 caches per day.

 

But no, subverting multi-caches or puzzle caches or letterbox-style LBH caches is not a good double premium membership benefit. For one thing, it violates section 2.D.xxiii of the terms of use by publishing puzzle cache solutions "without consent from the geocache owner."

 

I was considering placing a few puzzle caches, had I been able to find suitable locations to hide something bigger than a film pot. If the coordinates were given away to anyone for the sake of an extra $30/year I'd have archived them. The point of the puzzle is to solve the puzzle rather than just buy the answer. I know people trade answers, that's one of those things, but for it to be officially sanctioned would cross the line in my book.

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[bTW: the 30 EUR = 40 US$ thing isn't a gag, it isn't even funny, it's how europeans really are treated by Groundspeak]

Uh, didn't you mean that how Europeans are treated by their government, the European Union, that imposes the VAT?! Oh, that's right, that's covered in another thread. Feel free to bump it.

Yes, that's the official version, but it's hard to believe... Though european nations VATs are totally different, the 30 EUR fee is all the same in Europe. Plus I have difficulties to see where in the process an US based company as Groundspeak pays any VAT for their pure data listing service income from european sources. There is no exchange of goods with the information/database service they're charging 30 EUR for, this non-physical service is provided over internet with the same database as in the US, no offices or staff (other than unpaid reviewers) in Europe exist. They surely pay their taxes in the USA, fair enough - but not in Europe. Could you please explain the "European VAT" reasoning?

 

There may be a little expense in transferring money from one currency into another, but that's not the official explanation (and it's not 10$ per transfer!). Other countries outside Europe have VAT, too, but it's still 30 US$ for them.

 

A lot of people here just give fake adresses in USA to get the 30 US$ rate. There even is no financial law tampered with that, just the private contract between the customer and Groundspeak...so I see the official reasoning a bit over the edge - until someone explains it to me in detail. Yet to happen.

 

Most probably it's just the enormous customer base in Europe that could be used as a cash cow with the "magical 30" value. They just have luck that 30 EUR is significantly more worth than 30 US$ - and I bet they're going back to 30 US$ as soon as that changes.

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So maybe double premium membership could allow someone twice the PQ quota. They can do it already by buying a second membership, but then the find history of the two accounts is not linked.
Possibly, but why anyone would need more than 10 queries per day when each query can contain 1000 caches is a mystery. If you feel the need to download more than 10,000 caches every day perhaps there's a better way of addressing the need.
If you look at the current PQ quota as "10,000 cache listings per day" then sure, there's no reason for more. That's an order of magnitude more than even the most "optimized" numbers runs.

 

But if you look at it as "10 sets of search criteria per day", then some people might still need more. For example, if I have 20 different bookmark lists for caches I'm interested in, then I need 2 days worth of PQs to get them all, because each bookmark list requires its own PQ. Even if all the lists together contain fewer than 1000 caches, there is no way to run a single PQ that will get all the caches on 20 separate bookmark lists.

 

If the coordinates were given away to anyone for the sake of an extra $30/year I'd have archived them.
I considered that one likely outcome. I'm sure that Roman! and other puzzle haters wouldn't care, but obviously those of us who enjoy puzzle caches would be harmed by this outcome.

 

Another likely outcome would be for puzzle cache owners to provide "soft" coordinates for their final waypoints. Use Roman!'s double premium membership to get the coordinates, and you'll have a 200ft search radius. Solve the puzzle, and you'll have a 20ft search radius.

 

That's what Triple Premium Membership is for. It prevents coords from being given to DPMO cachers.
Yeah, like I suggested, double/triple/quadruple/etc premium membership could become an arms race.
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So maybe double premium membership could allow someone twice the PQ quota. They can do it already by buying a second membership, but then the find history of the two accounts is not linked.
Possibly, but why anyone would need more than 10 queries per day when each query can contain 1000 caches is a mystery. If you feel the need to download more than 10,000 caches every day perhaps there's a better way of addressing the need.
If you look at the current PQ quota as "10,000 cache listings per day" then sure, there's no reason for more. That's an order of magnitude more than even the most "optimized" numbers runs.

 

But if you look at it as "10 sets of search criteria per day", then some people might still need more. For example, if I have 20 different bookmark lists for caches I'm interested in, then I need 2 days worth of PQs to get them all, because each bookmark list requires its own PQ. Even if all the lists together contain fewer than 1000 caches, there is no way to run a single PQ that will get all the caches on 20 separate bookmark lists.

 

True, although if you've got that many bookmarks so close to home it's probably easier to just download based on a radius rather than the bookmarks?

 

I've thought for a while it would make sense to have as many PQs as you want running and have a limit of how many caches you can download per day. So if you want to say "show me the 10,000 caches closest to home that I haven't found" you'd get one honking great query. If you wanted to run 200 queries of 50 caches each you could do that too.

 

If the coordinates were given away to anyone for the sake of an extra $30/year I'd have archived them.
I considered that one likely outcome. I'm sure that Roman! and other puzzle haters wouldn't care, but obviously those of us who enjoy puzzle caches would be harmed by this outcome.

 

Another likely outcome would be for puzzle cache owners to provide "soft" coordinates for their final waypoints. Use Roman!'s double premium membership to get the coordinates, and you'll have a 200ft search radius. Solve the puzzle, and you'll have a 20ft search radius.

 

Even handing out soft coordinates would probably give the game away. If the clue gives an idea of what the target object is then the chances are it's not going to take all that long to find something that matches, even with soft coordinates. Unless, of course, the clue is "vil gerr" and the cache is a film pot in the middle of a dense patch of forest.

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But if you look at it as "10 sets of search criteria per day", then some people might still need more. For example, if I have 20 different bookmark lists for caches I'm interested in, then I need 2 days worth of PQs to get them all, because each bookmark list requires its own PQ. Even if all the lists together contain fewer than 1000 caches, there is no way to run a single PQ that will get all the caches on 20 separate bookmark lists.
True, although if you've got that many bookmarks so close to home it's probably easier to just download based on a radius rather than the bookmarks?
A lot depends on how selective you're being. If you're restricting yourself to caches in a certain park district, and they provide bookmark lists of the caches in each park (one bookmark list per park), then you could end up with one PQ per park in the district.

 

Or you could be doing something complicated with attributes. For example, you might want all caches that have any 2 of the attributes from a set of 6 different attributes. Each combination of 2 attributes would require a different PQ, so you'd need 30 PQs.

 

Or you could be doing something complicated with difficulty/terrain ratings. For example, if you want caches with a difficulty+terrain sum of 5 or more, then that requires 7 PQs (>4/1, >3.5/1.5, >3/2, >2.5/2.5, >2/3, >1.5/3.5, and >1/4).

 

It really depends how selective you're being, and how complicated your criteria are, because the only way to create a union of caches that meet any of several different criteria is to create multiple PQs.

 

Personally, I found 5 PQs per day to be more than enough. And 10 per day is downright extravagant. But I know there were people who bought extra premium memberships for PQs back when PQs were limited to 5 per day. There may still be people who buy extra premium memberships for PQs.

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Wait... this was a serious thread?blink.gif

Yes, a serious whine about puzzle and multi caches being too much effort for him.

I knew we could count on "The Jester" for serious insights! :laughing:

I'm Jest what you needed.

 

It's not about the effort, I have many mountain top finds I have spent the better part of a day hiking to.

 

It's about wasted effort, no where does it say I have to solve a puzzle or do all the stages of a multi to get a legitimate find hence to save me time I'd be willing to spend money, a lot of businesses are built on this model.

Edited by Roman!
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