TOPIC: "Ghosting" a run for Treasure - Changed at GenCon?

Forar wrote: I never said it was unintended or a loophole.

I feel people are talking to points I'm either making less than clearly, or that I'm not making at all.

As I've said like four times now, the notion of someone buying out a run due to preference (double downs, solo challenge, whatever), to control the party, whatever, is not something I'm concerned about. If dozens of people end up doing this, however, that becomes a potential challenge. If Treasure Runs and Double Downs and other "less than 10 player" choices, that defeats the entire purpose of increasing the players per run count. Buying out runs is a tangent to that tangent; *in aggregate*, the runs being bought out reduce the tickets available to the general population. People have commented here that runs do get missed from time to time, but obviously without an accurate count from behind the scenes we can only guess what the overall impact actually is (nor do I expect us to actually have these numbers).

Whether or not this is or will impact TD's business model remains to be seen, but I'm feeling a bit dogpiled here for simply raising a point of contention that seemed tangential to the original topic; people buying out runs simply to farm treasure. This reduces the number of people who get to play, especially if done heavily (as some posters here have postulated being able to do cost effectively).

Poor choices of phrasing or words aside, I think I've been pretty damned clear in that regard; I'm not speaking ill of Raven not wanting too many people in her space or someone buying a run to set up family and friends, simply noting that *in total*, if hundreds or more slots are being taken up in these various projects, even if the money in to TD remains the same, there is the potential for larger impact.

Being able to buy a run isn't a problem. Being able to buy 4 or 10 runs probably isn't a problem. Ten or twenty or fifty people buying 4-10 runs could be a problem.

Edit: for the record, I did try to walk away from this topic and move to another point of discussion.

A point that curiously nobody seems willing to address. Except, apparently, in the closed subforum, that is.

There was quite a bit of discussion on the Lords and Ladies forums on things that could be done to control people from buying out runs and filling them with Ghost players just to get Treasure Coins. I'm not sure if that info has been relayed on the general forums yet. Methods talked about included giving people some set number of sealed 10 packs of tokens (maybe around 8) in exchange for an unused ticket instead of treasure coins. Another method was to put a limit on the amount of treasure coins that a "ghost" player could get. Maybe around 10, but it would be set at some point where it wasn't likely someone could turn a profit on them.

Regarding people buying out multiple runs - at GENCON someone would actually need to go on four runs in order to see all of the Dungeon rooms (Puzzle and Combat on each of the two Dungeons). That's what I'm actually hoping to do next year, if we can get enough of our group members to fill four runs. We did three runs this year.

Mike Steele wrote:

Forar wrote: I never said it was unintended or a loophole.

I feel people are talking to points I'm either making less than clearly, or that I'm not making at all.

As I've said like four times now, the notion of someone buying out a run due to preference (double downs, solo challenge, whatever), to control the party, whatever, is not something I'm concerned about. If dozens of people end up doing this, however, that becomes a potential challenge. If Treasure Runs and Double Downs and other "less than 10 player" choices, that defeats the entire purpose of increasing the players per run count. Buying out runs is a tangent to that tangent; *in aggregate*, the runs being bought out reduce the tickets available to the general population. People have commented here that runs do get missed from time to time, but obviously without an accurate count from behind the scenes we can only guess what the overall impact actually is (nor do I expect us to actually have these numbers).

Whether or not this is or will impact TD's business model remains to be seen, but I'm feeling a bit dogpiled here for simply raising a point of contention that seemed tangential to the original topic; people buying out runs simply to farm treasure. This reduces the number of people who get to play, especially if done heavily (as some posters here have postulated being able to do cost effectively).

Poor choices of phrasing or words aside, I think I've been pretty damned clear in that regard; I'm not speaking ill of Raven not wanting too many people in her space or someone buying a run to set up family and friends, simply noting that *in total*, if hundreds or more slots are being taken up in these various projects, even if the money in to TD remains the same, there is the potential for larger impact.

Being able to buy a run isn't a problem. Being able to buy 4 or 10 runs probably isn't a problem. Ten or twenty or fifty people buying 4-10 runs could be a problem.

Edit: for the record, I did try to walk away from this topic and move to another point of discussion.

A point that curiously nobody seems willing to address. Except, apparently, in the closed subforum, that is.

There was quite a bit of discussion on the Lords and Ladies forums on things that could be done to control people from buying out runs and filling them with Ghost players just to get Treasure Coins. I'm not sure if that info has been relayed on the general forums yet. Methods talked about included giving people some set number of sealed 10 packs of tokens (maybe around 8) in exchange for an unused ticket instead of treasure coins. Another method was to put a limit on the amount of treasure coins that a "ghost" player could get. Maybe around 10, but it would be set at some point where it wasn't likely someone could turn a profit on them.

Regarding people buying out multiple runs - at GENCON someone would actually need to go on four runs in order to see all of the Dungeon rooms (Puzzle and Combat on each of the two Dungeons). That's what I'm actually hoping to do next year, if we can get enough of our group members to fill four runs. We did three runs this year.

I do 2 runs with my group (buying out the run) and pug the other 2 so I get to see all rooms. I learned my lesson few years ago when i missed a 'really cool room'.


Forar: I agree how many people like me and others around here to reach a magnified point on what is a small population? While i don't buy out 4 runs i have bought out 2 for past 3 years at gencon. This year i think due to me being organizer ended up buying 28 tickets (i ran 4 times, everyone else ran 2 in story runs) and picked up 2 more tickets via forums here.

Harlax wrote: You are way off the mark to allege there is a "black market" run by people who buy out runs.

In my case, I buy out a run for a group of 8 of my sons friends. I am a member of Team Synergy, a group of people who join together to buy out as many as 4 runs to accommodate the runs we want to do. I sponsored one of the runs this year.

All of these tickets would have been purchased by the individuals if group purchase had not been possible. The person buying the tickets is simply reimbursed by the members of the group on that run.

If tickets had to be purchased individually there is no way we could run together.

This is exactly what we do with basically two different teams. Our one team of ten individuals gets 4 runs of 10 tickets so that we can run every dungeon option. Then my secondary team (between 8-10 members depending on year) gets one run of ten tickets of each main dungeon, here may be a "ghost" on those last two runs, or like this year all ten slots were filled for all our runs.

Donald Rients wrote:

Harlax wrote: You are way off the mark to allege there is a "black market" run by people who buy out runs.

In my case, I buy out a run for a group of 8 of my sons friends. I am a member of Team Synergy, a group of people who join together to buy out as many as 4 runs to accommodate the runs we want to do. I sponsored one of the runs this year.

All of these tickets would have been purchased by the individuals if group purchase had not been possible. The person buying the tickets is simply reimbursed by the members of the group on that run.

If tickets had to be purchased individually there is no way we could run together.

This is exactly what we do with basically two different teams. Our one team of ten individuals gets 4 runs of 10 tickets so that we can run every dungeon option. Then my secondary team (between 8-10 members depending on year) gets one run of ten tickets of each main dungeon, here may be a "ghost" on those last two runs, or like this year all ten slots were filled for all our runs.

I think the TD tickets traded on the forum constitute a "grey" rather than "black" market. That doesn't mean anyone participating in it, including me, has any bad motives.

I've always been impressed that, no matter how scarce tickets get, people never trade them here for more than face value, unlike scalpers of sports and concert tickets.

Donald Rients wrote:

Harlax wrote: You are way off the mark to allege there is a "black market" run by people who buy out runs.

In my case, I buy out a run for a group of 8 of my sons friends. I am a member of Team Synergy, a group of people who join together to buy out as many as 4 runs to accommodate the runs we want to do. I sponsored one of the runs this year.

All of these tickets would have been purchased by the individuals if group purchase had not been possible. The person buying the tickets is simply reimbursed by the members of the group on that run.

If tickets had to be purchased individually there is no way we could run together.

This is exactly what we do with basically two different teams. Our one team of ten individuals gets 4 runs of 10 tickets so that we can run every dungeon option. Then my secondary team (between 8-10 members depending on year) gets one run of ten tickets of each main dungeon, here may be a "ghost" on those last two runs, or like this year all ten slots were filled for all our runs.

Sounds like a good system for you guys.

I know quite a few folks who have similar strategies - and because there's so many people who do this legitimately, we need to make sure that any recommendations on how to control Treasure Farming do not impact the teams who have one (or more) main player bringing in 10 (sets of) TE tokens for the other members of the group. Sure - it's possible that someone could bring in a bunch of human mules to do the same trick - but any methods to deter that kind of farming would have a very high chance of hurting groups like yours or Harlax' or Jedi's etc.

Raven wrote:

Donald Rients wrote:

Harlax wrote: You are way off the mark to allege there is a "black market" run by people who buy out runs.

In my case, I buy out a run for a group of 8 of my sons friends. I am a member of Team Synergy, a group of people who join together to buy out as many as 4 runs to accommodate the runs we want to do. I sponsored one of the runs this year.

All of these tickets would have been purchased by the individuals if group purchase had not been possible. The person buying the tickets is simply reimbursed by the members of the group on that run.

If tickets had to be purchased individually there is no way we could run together.

This is exactly what we do with basically two different teams. Our one team of ten individuals gets 4 runs of 10 tickets so that we can run every dungeon option. Then my secondary team (between 8-10 members depending on year) gets one run of ten tickets of each main dungeon, here may be a "ghost" on those last two runs, or like this year all ten slots were filled for all our runs.

Sounds like a good system for you guys.

I know quite a few folks who have similar strategies - and because there's so many people who do this legitimately, we need to make sure that any recommendations on how to control Treasure Farming do not impact the teams who have one (or more) main player bringing in 10 (sets of) TE tokens for the other members of the group. Sure - it's possible that someone could bring in a bunch of human mules to do the same trick - but any methods to deter that kind of farming would have a very high chance of hurting groups like yours or Harlax' or Jedi's etc.

That's why I don't favor anti-farming rules. They'll either hurt legitimate players or be easily skirted by loophole-seeking farmers. Either way, they'll be complicated.

It's simpler and cleaner to limit how profitable farming can be. That's the root of the situation, and why I go on about the loot cap.

My Son's group of 8 is not exactly a loot powerhouse.

Two Charms of Avarice, one Charm of Good Fortune, one Amulet of Treasure Finding, and 5 Lenses of Fortune.

59 chips for the group. Not shabby, but not like 10 Charms of Avarice.