TOPIC: Official Statement on Treasure Enhancers

Rob F wrote:

FirstGladiator wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote: My opinion
I don't see why it makes any difference who holds the tokens during the run. If one person has 10 CoA and outfits the entire party, let them show the coach, show the epilogue room. 10 ISSN, same thing.
The party still has them, whether or not an individual carries them or 10 individuals carry them.

I can only imagine why this is. I think it is much easier for a person holding on to all the tokens in a coin holder or whatever can pass them around much easier than one person trying to collect them back from 9 other people passing them around and then distributing them back to the whole party in a timely fashion. It will definitely make it much harder to accomplish the things that are happening now. I think this is a great move on TD's part and I agree and support their decision.

I agree with this. Having a book of TE's is much easier to pass on to others. And I completely support TPTB's decision to have each person physically hold on to the TE's they are running with for the entire length of the run. I believe Jeff's ultimate goal in doing this is to stop the casual lending of TE's, even to people in their own group. Because people that lend out 9 CoA's to other players, even their own friends/family usually still wind up keeping all the treasure for themselves after the run is over. Which is farming in a way. From the comments I'm seeing on this thread it appears Jeff might be successful in curbing lending if this policy holds. And if someone is really worried about a person(s) in their group losing one of the TE's that they lent to him/her then I have a very simple solution. Don't lend it to the person in the first place. Suggest that they get their own TE's. Problem solved.

My thoughts exactly Rob.

Now this is complete hearsay/rumor:

I heard from a fellow player at TDC (not a volunteer or an official staff member) that there was supposedly a case where an unscrupulous rogue was showing their Charms of Avarice during the coaching session (on behalf of multiple groups concurrently). The person then calculated when those parties would be at the epilogue room and showed up at the epilogue room during those times to pass off the Charms of Avarice (or show them to the epilogue person).

You would think that the epilogue person would notice this random guy showing up with a lot of Charms of Avarice.

But it sounds plausible and might get around the TE verification process at TDC.

If this really happened, it seems like the bigger failure point is easy access to the Epilogue room.

Incognito wrote: Now this is complete hearsay/rumor:

I heard from a fellow player at TDC (not a volunteer or an official staff member) that there was supposedly a case where an unscrupulous rogue was showing their Charms of Avarice during the coaching session (on behalf of multiple groups concurrently). The person then calculated when those parties would be at the epilogue room and showed up at the epilogue room during those times to pass off the Charms of Avarice (or show them to the epilogue person).

You would think that the epilogue person would notice this random guy showing up with a lot of Charms of Avarice.

But it sounds plausible and might get around the TE verification process at TDC.

If this really happened, it seems like the bigger failure point is easy access to the Epilogue room.

Sounds implausible to me given the small scale of the event and the volunteers in the coaching area.

FirstGladiator wrote:

Rob F wrote:

FirstGladiator wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote: My opinion
I don't see why it makes any difference who holds the tokens during the run. If one person has 10 CoA and outfits the entire party, let them show the coach, show the epilogue room. 10 ISSN, same thing.
The party still has them, whether or not an individual carries them or 10 individuals carry them.

I can only imagine why this is. I think it is much easier for a person holding on to all the tokens in a coin holder or whatever can pass them around much easier than one person trying to collect them back from 9 other people passing them around and then distributing them back to the whole party in a timely fashion. It will definitely make it much harder to accomplish the things that are happening now. I think this is a great move on TD's part and I agree and support their decision.

I agree with this. Having a book of TE's is much easier to pass on to others. And I completely support TPTB's decision to have each person physically hold on to the TE's they are running with for the entire length of the run. I believe Jeff's ultimate goal in doing this is to stop the casual lending of TE's, even to people in their own group. Because people that lend out 9 CoA's to other players, even their own friends/family usually still wind up keeping all the treasure for themselves after the run is over. Which is farming in a way. From the comments I'm seeing on this thread it appears Jeff might be successful in curbing lending if this policy holds. And if someone is really worried about a person(s) in their group losing one of the TE's that they lent to him/her then I have a very simple solution. Don't lend it to the person in the first place. Suggest that they get their own TE's. Problem solved.

My thoughts exactly Rob.

And I know others brought this up before, but ghosting also needs to be addressed at some point. When Jeff introduced the TE's I doubt he ever intended for one player to wind up with 190 Treasure Pulls after a run, be it ghosting or "it's not for me, I got these 9 CoA's for my friends BS". If Jeff wanted to allow a player to have 190 pulls after one run he would have created additional charm slots, ruled that the Charms could stack, etc. but that didn't happen. I say sell your extra TE's now, have your friends get their own, and just be happy with the 15-19 or whatever pulls you get on a run.

One could use some type of securable pouch with a finder inside. Supposedly the finder can be set to vibrate your phone if you get out of range, though it would be more helpful if you could set the range.

May be useful outside the dungeon too.

Incognito wrote: Now this is complete hearsay/rumor:

I heard from a fellow player at TDC (not a volunteer or an official staff member) that there was supposedly a case where an unscrupulous rogue was showing their Charms of Avarice during the coaching session (on behalf of multiple groups concurrently). The person then calculated when those parties would be at the epilogue room and showed up at the epilogue room during those times to pass off the Charms of Avarice (or show them to the epilogue person).

You would think that the epilogue person would notice this random guy showing up with a lot of Charms of Avarice.

But it sounds plausible and might get around the TE verification process at TDC.

If this really happened, it seems like the bigger failure point is easy access to the Epilogue room.

How would this fellow player know this occurred? Were they also loitering around both the entrance and epilogue room when this was occurring?

If they did know it was occurring, why didn't they bring it to the attention of the ACs?

Maybe they did and that's why we're having this discussion....

Rob F wrote:
And I know others brought this up before, but ghosting also needs to be addressed at some point. When Jeff introduced the TE's I doubt he ever intended for one player to wind up with 190 Treasure Pulls after a run, be it ghosting or "it's not for me, I got these 9 CoA's for my friends BS". If Jeff wanted to allow a player to have 190 pulls after one run he would have created additional charm slots, ruled that the Charms could stack, etc. but that didn't happen. I say sell your extra TE's now, have your friends get their own, and just be happy with the 15-19 or whatever pulls you get on a run.

Rob I love you man, but I actually found this hilarious. Why would Jeff care if 190 pulls go to one person or 19 go to 10 people. For him it is the number of tokens. I don't follow that logic at all. What does it matter to you if a group pools there tokens and treasure pulls? Specifically how does the way my friends and I play affect your play in any way?

First some basic thoughts about the policy Jeff posted:

1) I don't understand why they have to be shown at all in the coaching room. How about just showing them in the epilogue room. The volunteer in the epilogue room audits each person's TE's one at a time, and watches for any sharing or distributing of tokens. This removes work from already overloaded coaches instead of adding it. I'm not sure about the workload in the epilogue room though.

Ideally this is done in a physically set up queue with one side entrance only and the other side exit only. Really the whole scheme depends on limiting access to the epilogue room more than usual.

2 & 3) I do think that the volunteer needs to be able to physically inspect the tokens individually to make sure they are legitimate. I agree, even though it is a bit annoying.

4) It seems this is to discourage casual lending of treasure-enhancers, and with that goal it will probably work (see my next post). It also seems the tokens could be collected by the owner after the coach leaves, or in the hallway after the training room, and then can distribute them back out again in the hallway before the epilogue room.

If Item #4 remains in effect I suggest that we as a community look for a secure solution where the tokens can be stored around the neck and then easily removed in the epilogue room. For example I used a money belt at TDC for my set of treasure-enhancers and would likely do the same thing, unless somebody found something even better.

I 100% agree with making sure the treasure enhancers stay on the run in which they are being used. I 100% agree with checking them physically in the epilogue room. I am NOT convinced it is a good idea to discourage the lending of tokens within a party, however.

First of all, many people have full sets of 10 CoAs and now 10 Silver Nuggets solely for the situation where they are in a party full of people without treasure-enhancers. Before the CoA I just had a set of 10 Charms of Good Fortune to make sure I got my full synergy bonus, and other players also got a free 4 treasure pulls. This change will likely cause a decline in the purchase of future treasure-enhancing tokens, but I'm not sure how much.

Secondly, I was going to do this year what I did last year. I was going to find 9 complete strangers who have never played TD. I was going to buy all of their tickets and they were going to run for free. They would get the same 3 treasure pulls they would have normally received, and I was going to keep the rest to cover the cost of the run. I think this was a great way to introduce new players to TD (two from last year are hooked). With this change I likely won't be doing this again.

Thirdly, with the synergy bonus, us veteran players are going to be more encouraged to only play with other veteran players and friends who already have treasure enhancers or you are OK loaning one to. This may lead the veteran players to be more cliquey, largely sticking to the people they know.

On the other hand, I absolutely don't like hearing about a veteran wheeling and dealing in the coaching room with newer players about loaning of treasure-enhancing tokens and the following treasure draws. I also think that those of us who lend treasure-enhancers to strangers do kind of de-value the treasure draws.

I hope this doesn't impact the ability to ghost and collect treasure for the ghosts.

Kirk Bauer wrote:
Thirdly, with the synergy bonus, us veteran players are going to be more encouraged to only play with other veteran players and friends who already have treasure enhancers or you are OK loaning one to. This may lead the veteran players to be more cliquey, largely sticking to the people they know.

That may be a silver liming - I think the most negative interactions and attention getting ones are new/experienced players playing in a mixed party and problems with difficulty and party dynamics.

For myself I've pretty much just reconciled to getting 17 instead of 19. Those two missing synergy treasure pulls are not going to break the bank .

jedibcg wrote:

Rob F wrote:
And I know others brought this up before, but ghosting also needs to be addressed at some point. When Jeff introduced the TE's I doubt he ever intended for one player to wind up with 190 Treasure Pulls after a run, be it ghosting or "it's not for me, I got these 9 CoA's for my friends BS". If Jeff wanted to allow a player to have 190 pulls after one run he would have created additional charm slots, ruled that the Charms could stack, etc. but that didn't happen. I say sell your extra TE's now, have your friends get their own, and just be happy with the 15-19 or whatever pulls you get on a run.

Rob I love you man, but I actually found this hilarious. Why would Jeff care if 190 pulls go to one person or 19 go to 10 people. For him it is the number of tokens. I don't follow that logic at all. What does it matter to you if a group pools there tokens and treasure pulls? Specifically how does the way my friends and I play affect your play in any way?

I do think it makes a difference.

When things are distributed among lots of people, you have less overall variability. One person getting rid of their collection doesn't impact the market much. If everyone is concentrated in just a few hands, diminishing marginal utility means those people have lots of extras, as opposed to if those tokens were more evenly distributed (among all players).

One potential danger of situations where one person coordinates/pools their group's tokens is that the participation of that group may rest on that single individual. If that person quits (or dies!) the rest of the group may stop playing.

So there certainly are advantages to trying to diversify the base instead of having things get concentrated.

Disbeeleaf wrote: You are right that it is about stopping people from taking advantage, but there are much better ways to do that than what has been suggested with respect to removing tokens from secure storage during a dungeon run. Our group has many valuable tokens in our possession and removing them from the security of token books is a counterproductive and risky idea.