TOPIC: Treasure Inflation

Fred K wrote: I thought it might be useful to start a thread discussing treasure inflation.

The spreadsheets over the past 3 years seem to be telling us that the rates of drops of URs and higher value items is decreasing. Simultaneously, the max treasure people can draw has increased by 4 (and 2 more in another couple years).

Is it unreasonable to conclude those things are related?

If so, that presents a problem for TD for newer players. New players drawing a UR is a pretty cool sight. It likely has a big impact on driving them more into the hobby as well. With decreasing value of treasure draws, someone getting a really great item out of their 3 draws becomes increasingly unlikely.

At the same time, it is pretty likely that the new treasure enhancers are the best sellers. Ironically, they are also the best sellers for new players since it helps them get more out of each run (in terms of getting equipped).

How can TD solve this?

Not to be flippant, but solve what? The dilution of treasure is a solution to another problem.

One of the issues with which TD must contend is farming. When the “expected value” (EV) of loot from a run exceeds the cost of a ticket you increase the demand for tickets from ghosters and farmers, and that squeezes out newbies who can’t subsidize their runs with extra loot. And, with the cap going from 17 to 21 (+23.5%) in the last three years, the mix had to be diluted. And since it will jump another 10% in ‘22, we can expect further dilution then.

There are other ways to keep the EV down, but there are logistical challenges to managing multiple treasure mixes.

I agree with those who observed that the chances of a new player pulling a UR on their run from 3 chips was already minuscule. Most vets have 7 times those odds, so beefing up the mix is much more likely to help us than it will help newbies.

It’s been mentioned many times on here so I’ll just remind everyone that tinkering with an economy is a very delicate process even a very very large economy but especially and more so with a tiny economy like our token trading. Any actions taken we need to be measured years after to see what the effect has been.

Fred K wrote: I thought it might be useful to start a thread discussing treasure inflation.

The spreadsheets over the past 3 years seem to be telling us that the rates of drops of URs and higher value items is decreasing. Simultaneously, the max treasure people can draw has increased by 4 (and 2 more in another couple years).

Is it unreasonable to conclude those things are related?

If so, that presents a problem for TD for newer players. New players drawing a UR is a pretty cool sight. It likely has a big impact on driving them more into the hobby as well. With decreasing value of treasure draws, someone getting a really great item out of their 3 draws becomes increasingly unlikely.

At the same time, it is pretty likely that the new treasure enhancers are the best sellers. Ironically, they are also the best sellers for new players since it helps them get more out of each run (in terms of getting equipped).

How can TD solve this?

You're assuming TD even wants to solve the problem of "new players have to make one or more $100 purchases to get the same value today from a ticket as they did from a ticket a few years ago (and the ticket itself has gone up in price by $20+)".

My biggest concern is simply dillution of "cool and interesting" draws for new players. Because vets, like ourselves, get so many draws each time as enhancers have increased with the ioun stones - the treasure boxes have been adjusted over the past 2-3 years. We're seeing that in the data collected. UR and similar token percentage out of the overall mix has dropped.

I'm completely ok as a player for me to get fewer higher value tokens like URs but I don't want it to be where new players see them less frequently. It can be a big draw into the game to get some cool and interesting tokens as a newer player (either first run or first year). Essentially, I think there is value in having draws be an incentive for newer players more than they are today (i.e. returning to what we saw 4-5 years ago).

A lesser consideration (but still something that matters) is vets getting a ton of draws that are just going to be mulched into trade goods. Origins, for example, quite a few people had 100+ draws. Of those, we'll really keep maybe 10-15 (including monster bits, map pieces, and the occasional UR or similar.) Everything else, we're just going to transmute. Wouldn't it be nice to skip that step and have a draw option where we trade in 20 draws to get 1 or 2 draws of more valuable token draws representing post-transmute equivalents (argonite instead of 25 rare weapons, etc)? I'd love not to have to lug around the extra weight and, even worse, if I can't transmute them at the show, fly them home only to mail them to TD to have them mail me the end resulting trade goods. Even if my results are a bit worse with a "higher value" draw box and it means no transmuting, I'd be all in for it for the time savings.

Fred

For the benefit of new players, more enhanced and exalted tokens in the mix would be nice. That would give the feel of getting something special and prompt questions about transmuting.

Fred K wrote: My biggest concern is simply dillution of "cool and interesting" draws for new players. Because vets, like ourselves, get so many draws each time as enhancers have increased with the ioun stones - the treasure boxes have been adjusted over the past 2-3 years. We're seeing that in the data collected. UR and similar token percentage out of the overall mix has dropped.

I'm completely ok as a player for me to get fewer higher value tokens like URs but I don't want it to be where new players see them less frequently. It can be a big draw into the game to get some cool and interesting tokens as a newer player (either first run or first year). Essentially, I think there is value in having draws be an incentive for newer players more than they are today (i.e. returning to what we saw 4-5 years ago).

A lesser consideration (but still something that matters) is vets getting a ton of draws that are just going to be mulched into trade goods. Origins, for example, quite a few people had 100+ draws. Of those, we'll really keep maybe 10-15 (including monster bits, map pieces, and the occasional UR or similar.) Everything else, we're just going to transmute. Wouldn't it be nice to skip that step and have a draw option where we trade in 20 draws to get 1 or 2 draws of more valuable token draws representing post-transmute equivalents (argonite instead of 25 rare weapons, etc)? I'd love not to have to lug around the extra weight and, even worse, if I can't transmute them at the show, fly them home only to mail them to TD to have them mail me the end resulting trade goods. Even if my results are a bit worse with a "higher value" draw box and it means no transmuting, I'd be all in for it for the time savings.

Fred

Even Rare and Uncommon tokens are often "cool draws" for newer players. While many long term players and big token buyers may see them as just fodder for trade tokens, for newer players they are likely to fill gaps and go right into their token builds.

In order to keep monster bit and other special percentages you need to have the entire mix if you want to have draws.

One option maybe to have premade bags of a token or a few tokens that represent an equivalent of what 50 pulls would transmute to along with monster bits and specials. Then a random bag would be given. Not all bags would have the same number of tokens and it would take much more effort to prepare though. Just a thought.

If! a special treasure mix was ever created separate of the normal mix it would probably need to be maintained by only certain volunteers so that it would not be confused with other buckets. Maybe if it was kept in the transmute room with a volunteer there just to manage it.

@FredK - many people have shared your concerns for years, since well before the first Nugget was announced. Some have been expressing concerns since the HoP.

But spurring URTE-driven token sales and/or the thrill of drawing handfuls of loot was deemed at the time to be more important than any potential consequences. Of course, now those consequences are upon us, and I really don’t know how to put the genie back in the bottle.

My preferred solution that might be the best of both worlds would be two loot boxes. On each run you would get three “gold” TCs, or four if you’re level 6+, and any additional draws from TEs would be silver. The golden mix would obviously be better than the silver, and stay pretty consistent year after year. The silver mix would adjust every year as the loot cap rises. That way you could have a more generous mix for newbies, and a diluted mix for the extras. But I guarantee that will get lots of pushback because of logistics (the confusion of having two separate loot mixes) and FOMO (people who don’t want to see their extra loot devalued).

It’s a classic Tragedy of the Commons, and I’ve given up trying to find a way out. I sincerely wish you the best of luck.

Brad Mortensen wrote: @FredK - many people have shared your concerns for years, since well before the first Nugget was announced. Some have been expressing concerns since the HoP.

But spurring URTE-driven token sales and/or the thrill of drawing handfuls of loot was deemed at the time to be more important than any potential consequences. Of course, now those consequences are upon us, and I really don’t know how to put the genie back in the bottle.

My preferred solution that might be the best of both worlds would be two loot boxes. On each run you would get three “gold” TCs, or four if you’re level 6+, and any additional draws from TEs would be silver. The golden mix would obviously be better than the silver, and stay pretty consistent year after year. The silver mix would adjust every year as the loot cap rises. That way you could have a more generous mix for newbies, and a diluted mix for the extras. But I guarantee that will get lots of pushback because of logistics (the confusion of having two separate loot mixes) and FOMO (people who don’t want to see their extra loot devalued).

It’s a classic Tragedy of the Commons, and I’ve given up trying to find a way out. I sincerely wish you the best of luck.

This would require everyone to get their treasure as soon as the exit the dungeon. Or else there would not be a way to know if someone is coming back with 3 they got as extra. Not the worst thing, but it would complicate things for those doing back to back runs or any other event after their TD run.

I am still not convinced though that this year's mix was the intended mix. Though it is true the treasure has been more diluted for UR+'s
Gen Con Only UR+ percentages
2019 .30% on 7417 draws
2018 .41% on 5604 draws
2017 .64% on 9554 draws
2016 1.65% on 5507 draws

Gen Other (non pack rares and uncommons & non monster bits)
2019 8.22%
2018 11.71%
2017 5.93%
2016 6.05%

Other and Monster bits
2019 17.55%
2018 34.87%
2017 23.92%
2016 23.77%

We know there about half as many monster bits as Jeff wanted in the treasure box, I think it is possible there was half as much Other as well. Maybe not half as much UR+ but at least half as much other. If Other and Monster bits were what they were Gen Con 2018 then with 3 pulls a play would likely get something besides a pack rare/uncommon. Just a thought that we don't need to do anything or worry about anything if last year was just a mistake for the treasure, imo. We just don't have enough knowledge to make any suggestions, imo. Treasure is something that only 1 year has Jeff told us what the percentages were likely to be. Every other year we have had to guess, which is why I created the google doc so we would have some sort of idea after the fact. Nor am I suggesting we should now the percentages before any given year. In the tiny data set we have 4 years out of all the years of treasure I think we don't know much especially given 1 of those 4 years we know at least the monster bits were off.

I'm against having separate treasure boxes, simply because when that has been tried in the past it has often not worked well. For instance, when there were the regular treasure boxes and the treasure map treasure boxes, there were numerous reported instances where people were pulling from the wrong box.

What if EVERYONE gets 3...draw the box...and give treasure tokens for balance to be done at a different location WITH a different mixture