TOPIC: Combat vs Puzzle Demand

The storyarc is generally bupkis. At the very best it's nothing but convenient beard for the fact we're going through two adventures. If the plot wagon were any bigger it'd be on tracks and steam driven. I know someone asked what the plot was this year for grind and I remember snickering to myself about that.

henwy wrote: This year makes absolutely no sense compared to past years. The pattern that's been established has been puzzle always sells out faster than combat but this year it was the reverse. When I mentioned this to Eric he suggested that it's the Smoak effect finally wearing off after 3 years. After the fustercluck that was Smoak, duffers and newbies avoided combat like the plague figuring they had no chance to survive. That memory is fading with time and so we're actually returning to the pre-smoak days where there was a bias toward combat runs going first.

Yes, my ongoing theory is that in the past, enough people were smoked by Smoak that it shifted people away from combat and towards puzzle.

It also feels like there was some sort of memo that went out where people were told that Lycans was the good adventure and Golembane bites. Maybe this is just a thematic situation where people prefer werewolves to steampunk, but it was almost impossible to find full lycan combat runs yesterday in good timeslots.

I don't think it's surprising that "werewolves" are seen as cooler than "golems." Think of how many movies/games are centered on werewolves and how few on golems and other constructs / Frankenstein's monsters.

Plus, with werewolves you still get the "afterglow" from the Twilight series and Underworld series. There's also that horrid MTV series Teen Wolf. Not to mention just about every "menagerie of supernaturals" has an obligatory werewolf character: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Gates, Vampires Diaries, Being Human, Hemlock Grove, etc. Even Harry Potter had a couple of werewolves.

So as a result, I think it's quite logical that werewolves would be more popular than golems....

jedibcg wrote: I think though there are of us that do care about the story arc and therefore knowing which one is first is important.

Yes, there are some hard-core immersionists and RPG'ers where the story is more important.

Though there are also plenty of us where the story arc is secondary. Every year we're fighting some big baddie but I'm more interested in the loot than the reason we're fighting!

I agree with the others that formally splitting it into Part 1 & Part 2 distorts the ticket sales and distribution.

henwy wrote: The storyarc is generally bupkis. At the very best it's nothing but convenient beard for the fact we're going through two adventures. If the plot wagon were any bigger it'd be on tracks and steam driven. I know someone asked what the plot was this year for grind and I remember snickering to myself about that.

I dare ya to be snickering when you're facing the said monsters!

Every year it's actually Jeff who comes up with the setting/theme, especially since it has to segue with the overall yearly theme. So Jeff lets me know what the story / theme is, and I work out a logical group of monsters (while trying to reuse old combat boards when possible).

Lycans might also be more popular because it's more of a departure from the normal adventure. The tower adventure sounds a lot like the other tower & dungeon adventures we've done, but the Lycans adventure, being chased through a dark forest, seems very new and fresh. I suspect that is part of the reason it is seeing higher ticket sales.

Hopefully eventually they all sell out, both combat and puzzle versions.

Does anyone have a count of how many tickets of the puzzle and combat versions of each dungeon are left? That would be interesting to compare.

At the time of me posting this there are currently the following numbers of tickets available (this includes dedicated nightmare tickets):

93 Lycan combat
224 Golem combat > 317 total combat
90 Lycan puzzle
305 Golem puzzle > 395 total puzzle

Lycan total = 183
Golem total = 529

Did anyone check to ensure there were an equal number of Lycan and Golembane. I know it is a silly question because surely there were, but I thought occasionally before the tickets went on sale and I looked there the listed there would be either a Lycan missing or an extra Golembane. I was looking at everything very quickly so it could have just been my old eyes but are we sure they were equal?

I was right there are 6 more Golembane. Not a whole lot but that is odd that there are an extra 6 runs of Golembane according to the GenCon ticketing system.

jedibcg wrote: I was right there are 6 more Golembane. Not a whole lot but that is odd that there are an extra 6 runs of Golembane according to the GenCon ticketing system.

Perhaps Lycan runs were more popular for people with runs to pre-buy.

Probably which would just support the whole notion that it is the more popular run.

Adeya wrote: At the time of me posting this there are currently the following numbers of tickets available (this includes dedicated nightmare tickets):

93 Lycan combat
224 Golem combat > 317 total combat
90 Lycan puzzle
305 Golem puzzle > 395 total puzzle

Lycan total = 183
Golem total = 529

Thanks! That is a fairly large difference - maybe not that big when you take into account the total number sold though.

It is great that there are still tickets from all four Dungeons still available for newer players that haven't gotten around to getting tickets yet. Hopefully a lot of these tickets will translate into new players

Here's another thread about tickets remaining:

Remaining Tickets Thread