TOPIC: Gen Con 2019 feedback

Played through the Abyssal Swamp and the Path of Death at Gen Con 2019. While our group had fun in both rooms, we had some issues with the set up that we thought could be fixed with some minor tweaks. Granted, this was our first time with True Dungeon, but I hope our ideas have some merit.

1.) Difficulty selection - in the Swamp, the person filling out the party card asked 1 person what difficulty was being played, and went with what that person answered, without discussing it with the rest of the group. In the Path, 5 of 10 people (my group) were new players. The other 5 had been playing for 10+ years. The other 5 pushed for Hardcore, which our group wasn't ready for and one of our players ended up dead because of it.

Our suggested fix: base difficulty on time slot. That way, more advanced players can buy hardcore or higher tickets, and less advanced players can buy normal or non-lethal time slots.

2.) Player imbalance - as mentioned before, in Path, we had 5 newbies and 5 advanced players. So our 5 players walked in with the tokens we got that day, and a few basic 10 packs that we bought before going to Gen Con to try to prepare. The 5 advanced players in the group had thousands of dollars worth of tokens, with some individual tokens worth $1,000+ that they have collected over the years. This lead to some of the advanced players replacing our players entire loadouts with their tokens because our stuff was inadequate.

We think the same fix as before would work. Players with better gear could go to higher difficulty levels, and new players could stay on the lower levels.


Just a thought.

I also think difficulty based on time slot is worth exploring. Perhaps an assumed difficulty that could be overturned by a vote of 5. Had a hard time getting enough NM runs in. Ended up playing a lot of normal to prevent what happened to the OP.

Daniel White wrote: I also think difficulty based on time slot is worth exploring. Perhaps an assumed difficulty that could be overturned by a vote of 5. Had a hard time getting enough NM runs in. Ended up playing a lot of normal to prevent what happened to the OP.

The response every time this comes up is "the nightmare+ difficulty runs get new people in them because they didn't read the event description ".

We had that on a True grind run this Gen Con - 9 people coordinated on the forums for a potential nightmare run, and one that had never played TD before and had one booster. We geared him up and I think he had fun, but it sounds like you should just plain expect every nightmare run that wasn't purchased by one person would have at least 1 never played before player in it.

Endgame wrote:

Daniel White wrote: I also think difficulty based on time slot is worth exploring. Perhaps an assumed difficulty that could be overturned by a vote of 5. Had a hard time getting enough NM runs in. Ended up playing a lot of normal to prevent what happened to the OP.

The response every time this comes up is "the nightmare+ difficulty runs get new people in them because they didn't read the event description ".

We had that on a True grind run this Gen Con - 9 people coordinated on the forums for a potential nightmare run, and one that had never played TD before and had one booster. We geared him up and I think he had fun, but it sounds like you should just plain expect every nightmare run that wasn't purchased by one person would have at least 1 never played before player in it.

Thats of course a risk. There are lots of solutions for that though. Warning text in the event title and description, email to ticketholders about the event...etc..and with 9 NM players someones going to have gear to lend anyway...

Something as simple as a begginner, intermediate or advanced might do it without overcomplicating it

New people may not know to look at a forum to coordinate a difficulty, but may notice if the title is "E1-Nightmare difficulty"

There were a couple of issues a number of years back when there were some slots dedicated to "Nightmare" difficulty level. One was, as has been noted, that some people who aren't outfitted for Nightmare and don't want to play Nightmare bought tickets for it. They probably did partly because they didn't read the descriptions, and partly because the Nightmare Slots were the only ones available. That was the other problem, the slots pre-selected as Nightmare difficulty sold far slower than other tickets, I think the regular tickets were almost completely sold out while there were a number of Nightmare slots still available.

This is not an official response just my opinion.

I am sorry you have a poor experience on Path due to some veterans. They should know better and if they persuade you to play a higher difficulty they should be doing everything in their power to keep you alive and bring you back if you die.

Besides what the previous posters explained about difficulty options in the ticketing system your coach should have handled that situation better.

You should reach out to True Dungeon and let them know the date and time of your run. The coach should have confirmed that all players were good with Hardcore because if even one player wants to play Normal then the difficulty is Normal (change in difficulty has to be unanimous).

Ed

MasterED wrote: This is not an official response just my opinion.

I am sorry you have a poor experience on Path due to some veterans. They should know better and if they persuade you to play a higher difficulty they should be doing everything in their power to keep you alive and bring you back if you die.

Besides what the previous posters explained about difficulty options in the ticketing system your coach should have handled that situation better.

You should reach out to True Dungeon and let them know the date and time of your run. The coach should have confirmed that all players were good with Hardcore because if even one player wants to play Normal then the difficulty is Normal (change in difficulty has to be unanimous).

Ed

Ed, you're exactly right. Since it was a mixed group, the coach should have confirmed it was unanimous to not play normal. Players shouldn't force other players to play a higher difficulty level if they don't want to.

Did the advanced players during the run ignore you guys? What classes did you and they play?

Was the coach in a hurry to fill out the party card or was there still time left ?

How come you did not speak up when the coach was doing this ?

The advanced guys came in at the last minute, the coach was in a hurry because they were so late, they threw vacuum sealed packs of tokens to our paladin, badgered our fighter into switching to barbarian, then handed the coach pre-filled out character sheets, which he just took and walked out before we could say anything since we were now running late.

One advanced guy came in and totally steamrolled the rest of the group, and the coach just took what he said as what needed to happen.

Sorry to hear of your experience. I know there are a lot of veterans that try to make sure newer players have a great experience. We also try to make sure the newer players feel good about any gear enhancements we offer, but we also say something like "It's that okay or how's that sound". Like: "I would like to loan to you this Charm and if I do everyone in the party gets 10 extra Hit Points. That sound okay?" I've never heard anything but "yeah sounds great!" But if I ever did get a no thanks, I would be fine with it.

But unfortunately, you always have people that aren't that considerate. Jacob thanks for coming here and suggesting a good solution. As mentioned, when this was done in the past it didn't work, but that doesn't mean it might not now. if you enjoyed playing enough to try it again, please know most people don't support that type of railroading. Come back and hopefully you'll have a much better experience.

What about this for a crazy idea, most hours have 5 runs start. If two were definite times like 3:00 and 3:12 - 10 tixs each. If you are trying to buy out a run you go for these early times (maybe even sell them as a group of 10 tixs). Then the other 3 runs are sold as TD start like 3:24, end 6:00. There would be 30 tickets available and 3 runs would fire in that time frame just like normal. As people check in they are sent to the coaching area. A coach is there and asks them if they are a new player? What difficultly would you like to play? How many in your group? Things like that. The coach does there best to group people by difficulty level and keep groups together. This might lead to having runs with newer players, more Nightmare runs firing. But I'm sure this would create it's own problems, but it might help the problem documented by Jacob.

As Ed mentioned, the coach should have confirmed with you before marking Hardcore. It's OK to want to play normal.

Why did your fighter switch to Barbarian?

Another thing that should have happened is something that's new for this year. As I understand it, up to 4 members of the party is allowed to play on Non Lethal difficulty even if the difficulty of the party is something else (even Nightmare). This is designed to help a minority of newbies in a group of veterans and when I heard about it I thought it was a great idea. In your case the coach should have offered that four of you could have chosen that option, presumably the least-well-equipped ones.

As for the veterans, most of us are great (at least that's my perspective) but there are always some bad apples in a bunch, or people that just get crazy by behind behind schedule, etc. Veterans should not show up late unless they have the whole 10 tickets. They should not change people's classes, or ask to do so. And they should not pressure people into running Hardcore.

So there are a lot of "shoulds" that didn't happen, my apologies on behalf of True Dungeon (I'm not official, just a player and a volunteer).

Finally, the "sealed" adventures were designed to help with this. I'm not saying you shouldn't play the regular adventures, but if you play the sealed adventures it should have helped both of the issues that you encountered.

I also have bigger ideas that I will post elsewhere, thanks for reminding me.