TOPIC: Re: Ingredients instead of 10 packs?

Is this where I'm supposed to start with, "Hi, I'm Jennifer V. ...."

I like trading for ingredients I need. The auction idea would be cool. I would not want a bag with all the ingredients...well unless I got a golden ticket

What about getting monster trophies (ingrediants) for the monsters you defeated in the dungeon? So if you defeated the Harpy, at the end (or even right in the room) you got a harpy talon. Then treasure pulls could be more focused on loot rather than ingrediants?

Why don't we just make it really simple?  Take the trophy tokens out of the treasure box.  When you turn in your treasure token, you can request a specific trophy token instead of drawing treasure.<br /><br />Benefits:<br />1. You already have a person manning the treasure box, so they can hand out trophy tokens instead. Not much extra effort.<br />2. People who care about them can make sure they get one of each. This makes sense anyway since if you killed each of the monsters, it shouldn't be an issue to get each item.<br />3. By taking them out of the treasure box, newer players who could care less about them are more likely to get things they will be excited about taking back into the dungeon next time.<br />4. People who run later in the con don't feel like they have less of a chance to get them because the treasure box got picked clean before they went. I know it's supposed to be the same mix for the whole con, but several people felt strongly that was not the case this year.<br />5. People who run multiple times don't have to worry about getting yet more trophy tokens they already have. This makes the treasure pull more fun.<br /><br />Drawbacks:<br />1. People with HoP's could get a lot of them. However, it also allows them to not end up with 8 of trophy x and instead get to draw more actual treasure from the treasure box.<br />2. You might get a trophy for a creature you didn't defeat. True, but that is still the case with the current system.<br /><br />

I like that idea!

The idea has merit.  I know we pulled repeats of ingredients we already had plenty of, instead of getting something new and cool.

Personally, I prefer the random system the way it is now.  I like the excitement of randomly pulling tokens, instead of being able to just pick which ones you want.  And, trading to get the ones you're short on.<br /><br />One drawback of being able to handpick the ones you want, is that it will be like survivor pins, and they will likely be all gone by Friday or Saturday, leaving the people running later in the weekend with no chance of any ingredient tokens.  Many people will just take all ingredient tokens instead of any random draws, since ingredient tokens are worth more, and many people have all the Rare & Uncommon tokens they want. 

Probably for this to work, they would have to make sure they have enough ingredient tokens.  Predicting that could be the tough part.  It may be a higher or lower number than they mix in with the randoms today.

I also prefer the current system, which does force people to trade.<br /><br />If you simply receive them automatically (or near automatically by opting for them over normal treasure pulls), it makes it way too easy to get them. Ingredients quickly lose value (since they're relatively easy to get), and most importantly, it becomes too easy to collect them all to make the 4C combo. Which means either the 4C will become significantly weaker, or you're need a lot more other stuff to make it.<br /><br />So I think the current system is fine.

<br />Personally, I prefer the random system the way it is now.  I like the excitement of randomly pulling tokens, ...<br />

<br /><br />Funny - this same logic can apply to the lite-packs...  I like the random GP I get with some $250 groups, and I like the Healing randomness I get, and I like the PLAT and Common randomness too...<br /><br />It saves TD money to give 3 ingredients instead of a 10 pack...and it saves TD money to ship fewer tokens to the big buyers...but I dunno...I get a bad taste for some reason...I mean we are getting close to TD selling single tokens (albeit, random) but saying that the commons and uncommons are fodder...well that is just not the case.  Creating the Reserve Bars, and Trade items to soak up extras sitting in peoples hands is AWESOME fun for folks.  Please Jeff...if you decide to go with the Lite bag...make it 100% optional to the buyers.

<br />Why don't we just make it really simple?  Take the trophy tokens out of the treasure box.  When you turn in your treasure token, you can request a specific trophy token instead of drawing treasure.<br /><br />Benefits:<br />1. You already have a person manning the treasure box, so they can hand out trophy tokens instead. Not much extra effort.<br />2. People who care about them can make sure they get one of each. This makes sense anyway since if you killed each of the monsters, it shouldn't be an issue to get each item.<br />3. By taking them out of the treasure box, newer players who could care less about them are more likely to get things they will be excited about taking back into the dungeon next time.<br />4. People who run later in the con don't feel like they have less of a chance to get them because the treasure box got picked clean before they went. I know it's supposed to be the same mix for the whole con, but several people felt strongly that was not the case this year.<br />5. People who run multiple times don't have to worry about getting yet more trophy tokens they already have. This makes the treasure pull more fun.<br /><br />Drawbacks:<br />1. People with HoP's could get a lot of them. However, it also allows them to not end up with 8 of trophy x and instead get to draw more actual treasure from the treasure box.<br />2. You might get a trophy for a creature you didn't defeat. True, but that is still the case with the current system.<br /><br />

<br /><br />I like this idea, too.  I think the major complication is in not running out.  Given historical ingredient values, the people on Thursday could certainly stock up on ingredients and deplete the reserves for the whole weekend, if there were nothing in place to prevent that.  Then with no one on Saturday getting ingredients, the trade values would skyrocket (sort of like what happened with Creeper Thorns this year, only worse).  That would be even worse than the current system.  <br />

It's very hard to say what the take rate would be on this.  There were a lot of new or near new players this year (I know 'cause I coached a bunch).  A good number of them would have probably opted for the treasure over the ingredients  because not all of them are going to become token-aholics.  Plus, if Jeff continues to put something in the treasure draws (like the arcane recipe) to entice some that would otherwise opt for ingredients, you might find them lasting longer than you might think.  It's a toss-up.  Until actually done, I'm not sure we have nearly enough data to even predict the outcome.<br /><br />I have no real strong opinion one way or the other, but from what I'm seeing on the boards, a lot of people that care about ingredients are short of particularly creeper thorns and there are probably a lot of single-timers or casual players out there that don't even know this board exists sitting there with a creeper thorn they'll never use and may have no idea that they could trade for something better.