TOPIC: Increasing number of low value URs

Exbalz wrote: What I'm about to say may be unpopular in this thread.

1. It's simply not possible for every new UR level token to both be highly in demand because it's replacing an older UR in everyone's build and for that same UR to hold a value of $100 or more into the future. The UR level of tokens should not be designed in such a way that they must replace a token in a current BiS build or you will rapidly escalate this game into dangerous territory that will ruin its long-term outlook. You can't retire by selling your token collection if the game dies.

"But Exbalz, tokens need to be exciting in order to drive sales."

2. There is a lot of design space available for both creativity, fun, and exploration of a class and its capabilities. I may be a bit biased here but seeing ranged ranger options open up an alternative build style over the last few years has been exciting to see. Alternative builds for classes should be explored both for long-term health of the game and to let entrenched players switch things up from time to time. How cool would it be to have a series of Cleric tokens that turn the Cleric into an unholy 2H wielding wrecking ball but severely restrict their ability to heal? Or what about a rogue build that revolves around "cooldown" based abilities on tokens that are powerful but situational?

"But Exbalz, there are a lot of players that are firmly entrenched and don't want to change their build"

3. Bring a friend to the game! Or make a friend out of a new player that's in your pug run! At some point, every single one of us will stop playing this game. Not every new player wants to obtain only the BiS tokens, some people want to maximize fun when playing a game (novel concept). Oh and by the way, expanding the player base increases demand for our precious poker chips, so if someone wants to play a drunken punchy wizard with butterfly wings and wants tokens that support that end, let's encourage them to be as drunk and punchy as they want (in-game). In case you haven't noticed, True Dungeon is currently getting its teeth kicked in on r/gencon by feedback from players that tried the game, had one bad experience with players in their group and not only did they not come back, they are now actively discouraging other potential new players from trying the game. Don't like making friends and only care about seeing your UR go from $50 to $65? Think of this as a way to enable your goals by expanding the player base! You can't retire by selling your token collection if the game dies.

"But Exbalz, the game needs a price point in between rare and UR"

4. Agreed. UR's with a market price below PYP lets a lesser invested player feel like they're getting an upgrade or maybe two for the price of a PYP. Don't know anyone who wants to participate at this in-between price point? See also Point #3.

I fully realize that some of this may come off a bit snarky, but the design ideas I see being presented here tend towards the "this sure would help me and my $50 UR problem" and not "this would help the overall health of the game, which is good for everybody". Let's aim for the latter and the former will take care of itself. Community uber alles.

I would personally love to see greater variation in builds. If we went down that road we could have years worth of new tokens. I want a polymorph barbarian, a spellsword wizard, a fighter with more abilities.

The only problems with this is people will argue about class identity and you also potentially get into class card modifications. I do think it would be worth the effort to do something like this though.

I also really like your what's best for the game thoughts. The amulet of aiming is a low cost UR and nobody wants to draw it because of class relics and legendaries. A new player though, doubling their crit range is huge, not all UR's are made for seasoned players. This is a good thing and thinking otherwise is dangerous for the game. Don't be upset that the UR you pulled is only worth $50 and be happy you pulled a token worth $50.

I agree with Exbalz. But, I'd say there's not much of a solution with the current model.

There's a reason some collectible games have gone to set rotation. Want to make new tokens popular? Don't allow a whole swath of older. But, existing players hate that, for good reasons.

So, junk URs get some added benefit. What about junk relics? Junk legendaries? Then, how much of a benefit is it really? Throw URs into transmutes and they go to the lofty heights of $60 instead of $25-50?

As much as I think the UR space should be in generating a variety of abilities instead of increasing numbers, there's only so much design space there. And, while some may want to have more interesting builds, lot of folks just want bigger numbers, so it's not like it helps sales to put out Immunity to Petrification UR, Immunity to Poison UR, Immunity to Fire UR as one type of effect that isn't just more numbers.

There's probably always been two different token markets for the game. For a while, that was below URs and URs+. I'd say the current divide is more below URs and "which relics/legendaries/legendary adjacents do I want as soon as the new year starts?" URs aren't anything special when relics and whatnot are ubiquitous.

Now, there was an argument for not making better rares. The greater the divide between rare and UR, the more value an UR has. I never understood why better rares was helpful, as the game has been working off of two markets and it was fine for rare and below builds not to be any better and run at Normal/Hardcore. I didn't think through the implications of Enchanter's Whetstone. Basically, a rare build today is an UR build of yesteryear.

Well, kind of. The reality is that there are so many more options in different slots that there's rarely anything special about a new UR.

How do you make a desirable neck slot token at this point for more than half the classes? How do you make a high end relevant wrist slot token at this point? Legs were interesting at the UR level ... up until Dungeonbane obsoleted all of the UR ones. Every time there's a new token that is clearly better than existing options, just obsolete a bunch of other options. Now, that's how CCGs work where making CCG environments better is hardly ever about adding cards after like the first two expansions but, instead, about banning all of the best cards to flatten out the power curve.

Now, inflation may just be the nature of the business. Magic added a higher rarity level out of packs. Not that I think the inflation means URs should be better but rather that more of the playerbase has UR builds becaue they have become so cheap. Pick up your Lucky Kilt for $25. Get a +2 Staff of Power for whatever and play on Normal with your extra first level spell each room with no damage bonus. Token sales just becomes less about URs being the drivers. That's obviously challenging when $3k of an $8k are from URs at moment.

Obviously, I have a lot of time and money invested in the token business. The fluctuations in the token market can have a large impact on me and my business. I'll admit that it is becoming more and more difficult to keep my business out of the red. I hope that is temporary! But before I had TD Tavern, I was a player, and I have volunteered quite a bit over the years. Therefore, my number one priority is the continued success of the game, which would also hopefully mean that the token market remains viable in the future.

I agree that the expansion of the player base is the number one priority. I think Covid really messed up some good momentum -- the number of in-person events has dropped and we are even having volunteer issues at GenCon. We did get some positives from Covid, specifically VTD, but I don't think that brings in many new players, if any. I am cautiously optimistic about Barb Beard's Treasure at GenCon hopefully being a good way to get newbies into the game. I don't like seeing all of the negative comments out there about TD and this year I have been strongly suggesting people try the new sealed pack run. I hope we can continue to find ways to make this game approachable for new players. I'm excited that we have a new event in Atlanta this year; hopefully that will take off!

Specifically related to the token market, I agree that things need to change and I think they probably need to change very soon. I don't think the solution is providing better and better URs, Relics, and Legendaries. I agree that the solution has to be almost exclusively about variety. Build variety, gameplay variety, etc. If there is only one way to play, then there is only one best build for each class, and nobody will buy tokens unless their build gets better, or they get more loot. But what if there were more ways to play? And what if there was much more build variety? That's what I think will continue to drive the token market forward. I don't like the idea of sunsetting older tokens or anything like that, because I don't think TD is nearly big enough to survive that like some CCGs are able to do.

I will post some more specific ideas here shortly.

I've seen a few people comment about negative feedback people are leaving about TD. Where are they doing that - the GENCON Forums? Are there any specific issues they have? I'm wondering if they're identifying some things that can actually be improved.

OK, I just wanted to add some ideas for discussion. There are three categories of ideas here:

• Increasing build diversity, and therefore opening up token design space, and therefore boosting token sales without so much power creep
• Increasing gameplay diversity, and therefore encouraging players to have different types of builds for different types of play, and therefore boosting token sales without so much power creep
• Finding and supporting new players

Build diversity

I'm not very creative so these are just some starting suggestions. Jeff has said that this year (finally!) we'll be designing new character cards. He seems open to some radical changes. Perhaps we get new types of classes beyond the current 12 classes.

In addition, or alternatively, I'd like to see at least two paths for each character class. They would become differentiated definitely at 6th level (or, perhaps, even at 5th level). For example, a melee ranger or a ranged ranger. A good paladin and an evil paladin (or a retribution paladin). I'd love to see stats play into that. So, when you go from a 4th level to a 5th level ranger, you need a level bump token (like today) to get the two-sided 5th level card. On one side there is the melee ranger, and the other side is the ranged ranger. You need a minimum amount of DEX or a minimum amount of STR to play each variant.

Again, I'm not super creative so I'm sure there are a lot more interesting paths that the characters could take, and more interesting ways to unlock those.

Some good things I've seen recently: I've seen a lot more saves in VTD, and that helps build diversity a bit, because perhaps you can't build so many glass cannon characters.

Gameplay Diversity

Because this is not a competitive game, I think you need challenging cooperative goals. The primary goal for most people is to survive and/or win at a certain difficulty level. I'd like to see other goals. We do a lot of this as a community already with various challenge runs. I think this helps, but I think it could be done better if it was an official thing. I also think it can be pretty hard to organize these runs, so I think there are some technology solutions with td.events that could help. For example, perhaps a certain Safehold level lets you choose a specific challenge run at each non-GenCon event. That slot is now marked as that type of run, and when people buy tickets they have to agree to that type of run.

Some random ideas (again, not the best ideas):

• Runs where all players must play the same class (e.g. an all-Wizard run). Probably much easier to do with VTD where you don't need to worry about pucks. Maybe it is just a "same-class" run and the first person to select the class for that run locks in that class. I think this could be pretty fun.
• A no-healing run (no healing of any sort allowed)
• A ranged-attacks-only run
• TrueGrind runs -- the normal dungeon, but with an additional, dedicated, DM, that goes along the whole run with you. This creates faster combats (two DMs in each room, like in Grind), and then Grind DM has additional rules for the combats that the regular DMs don't need to know about. Would cost extra money to cover the additional DM. Would require more DMs, unfortunately.

New Players

I think the sealed pack run at GenCon is a good start. I hope it works out well! But I think even better will be curated, newbie-only runs. We sometimes have normal-only runs, but I don't think that's good enough. We have True Dungeon 101, but again, I don't think it is enough. We need specific runs, especially at GenCon, that are for newbies only. No outside tokens. No treasure enhancers. No veterans, etc. But there is one volunteer (or veteran player) that does the run with them to keep things going smoothly. I have done these types of things in the past and they worked out very well, in my opinion. The volunteer/veteran player will not provide tokens, will not push for a higher difficulty, will not rush or give solutions to puzzles, etc.

I think you could probably find quite a few veteran players to volunteer for this. I don't think it needs to be an official volunteer position. You'd just get to join a specific run for free at GenCon. But perhaps you are able to contact the players in advance and make sure they get their questions answered, etc. One challenge is -- how do we make sure the veteran player isn't a jerk? I have run with veterans that I would not want escorting new players, and they probably don't realize that they'd be bad at that. I mean, maybe I'm bad at it? Who knows. But you could collect anonymous feedback from the players afterwards and keep a score for each of the volunteers, and over time you only invite the top-rated veterans to host these runs in the future.

Mike Steele wrote: I've seen a few people comment about negative feedback people are leaving about TD. Where are they doing that - the GENCON Forums? Are there any specific issues they have? I'm wondering if they're identifying some things that can actually be improved.

What I've read so far was a little on GC Discord and more on Facebook, and majority are about negative group experiences, not as much with TD itself. Experienced folks that would take over runs with mixed experience players, or tell new players what to do or how to do things their way instead of letting them figure it out. I didn't see much by way of solutions other than to try the sealed runs. In fairness I am not following these discussion as closely as others here are, so take this as a sampling and one player's perspective. It's also a good reminder to everyone to be a good steward of the game and listen to everyone in the party. I'm grateful my experiences so far have been overwhelmingly positive as both a new player and as a more experienced member of a party.

Mike Steele wrote: I've seen a few people comment about negative feedback people are leaving about TD. Where are they doing that - the GENCON Forums? Are there any specific issues they have? I'm wondering if they're identifying some things that can actually be improved.

Here is an example of one:

www.reddit.com/r/gencon/comments/13eu193/how_to_do_true_dungeon_a_single_newbie/

Kirk Bauer wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: I've seen a few people comment about negative feedback people are leaving about TD. Where are they doing that - the GENCON Forums? Are there any specific issues they have? I'm wondering if they're identifying some things that can actually be improved.

Here is an example of one:

www.reddit.com/r/gencon/comments/13eu193/how_to_do_true_dungeon_a_single_newbie/

We had an experience like that when "a friend of a friend" joined us. She made it a much worse experience, that's one reason I always try to fill our group with friends we know, to avoid that happening again.

I have generally had almost all great experiences. I can remember at least one time that I joined a group here on the forums (quite a while ago), and we clearly discussed (in coaching) who had previously solved the puzzles, etc. We talked about the fact that the people (including me) who hadn't done the run before didn't want spoilers or help on the puzzles unless they asked for it.

We walk into the first puzzle, and one person (who had solved the puzzle before) literally sat there and gave specific directions to everybody on exactly what to do in order to solve the puzzle. I don't even think he waited for the DM to finish their intro.

I can't remember what happened after that...

Kirk Bauer wrote: I have generally had almost all great experiences. I can remember at least one time that I joined a group here on the forums (quite a while ago), and we clearly discussed (in coaching) who had previously solved the puzzles, etc. We talked about the fact that the people (including me) who hadn't done the run before didn't want spoilers or help on the puzzles unless they asked for it.

We walk into the first puzzle, and one person (who had solved the puzzle before) literally sat there and gave specific directions to everybody on exactly what to do in order to solve the puzzle. I don't even think he waited for the DM to finish their intro.

I can't remember what happened after that...

That's kind of what happened with us, including her running around to solve the puzzle before our Rogue had even finished the Rogue's box. Plus, to make matters worse, all the advice she was giving us was wrong.

New Players.
It will be interesting to see how many new players try the sealed pack run.
Between seeing the "its impossible to get tickets to TD" and the price, I can see where it would be a challenge to get new folks to try it.
It is like any game. Jumping in as a rookie with so many dedicated players is quite daunting. Why I would never try one of the big D&D tournament events or an Axis and Allies one.

So I’m a bit late to this thread but I felt I should add a few thoughts

First, we lost pax south and origins as TD conventions. Pax south is forever and who knows on origins.

These cons were less expensive to play at and easier to get runs at. But I think we are losing a fair amount of players that would have been scooping up the excess URs.

Second we have a slowing economy.

Next some players will not even buy anymore tokens until they see if they can get into runs at gencon, and prices usually spike closer to gencon.

Another problem might be the safehold program and the extra steep spending it requires to keep at the upper end of builds. I know I have slowed my spend while I decide what to do on that end. I considered dropping out of the game when seeing the expected cost on the Uber avarice.

Ticket prices at gencon are getting ridiculous. If TD keeps going up at the rate it is, many people will drop for that reason alone. VTD is high as well for what it is.
At this point I’m only doing each dungeon once due to high cost. TD event inflation is out pacing real world inflation on tickets, I’m not sure it’s sustainable. It will be fine at gencon because supply is still the problem at that one con but I think high ticket prices may negatively affect token sales down the road.

Also one last thing, I think enchanters whetstone making rare weapons better than many older UR weapons is part of our problem as well on prices.