TOPIC: Mythic XP Ideas?

Dave wrote:

Flik wrote:

edwin wrote: With not needing a Safehold 1 to do Mythic DR then I do not see a need for a separate XP track or other rewards.

The extra rewards can be rolled into Safehold 1 and Mythic tokens process.

He has now updated another post to say you will need to show Safehold 1 to play Mythic DR.

Good catch. I missed seeing that change.

Just saw that change. Stet on the previous comment.

Jeff Martin wrote: How about we create a separate XP Board for Mythic play?

Anytime you play on Mythic level you would get two XP codes with one for non-Mythic play (as is done now) and another code for the Mythic XP Board. We could have special rules and rewards unique to Mythic players. We could have, for example, allow folks to enter up to 2 codes (instead of the limit of 1 now) to get XP for playing Mythic. Level rewards could be cool pins like the 8th level pin we have now. Please share any thoughts you have about how Mythic XP could be handled differently than how it is run now. Thanks.

IMO In addition to the Mythic Track for XP it would be neat to have special Virtual Mythic Runs available for those who can play at the Mythic level. These runs could piggyback on the same weekend the Patron runs occur. This would be a reward for those who have spent the time and money to achieve Mythic builds.

Now that I've got a bit more time, let me write out my concerns with this in more detail.

Scenario 1: A player crafts a Safehold I, but they do not know many/any other players who have one. The player is unable to get a Mythic group together and misses out on the Mythic rewards despite having spent the sizable investment required to be eligible for them.

Scenario 2: A player crafts a Safehold I and knows multiple other players who have one. They all turn up for an adventure and use a few extra copies of Safehold I to pressure the other players into playing Mythic so they don't miss out on the Mythic rewards. The pressured players do not survive the adventure and have a generally poor experience.

Scenario 3: A player crafts a Safehold I and coordinates with other players via the forums to find other Mythic players and arrange runs. However, the number of players is not a multiple of 10 so there are some people who miss out on some or all of the adventures, missing out on the Mythic rewards.

All of these scenarios (and probably more which I haven't thought of) are only a problem due to the existence of exclusive rewards - rare completion tokens have taken the place of uncommon ones rather than being exclusive to higher difficulty levels for very similar reasons. Anything more significant than a survivor pin is likely to create situations where players resent missing out on them.

I would strongly encourage Mythic rewards to consist of a just a mythic survivor pin and other less-impactful rewards, possibly digital ones like forum badges or an annual exclusive virtual run like with the Patron codes (which would be adjustable for smaller groups based on foreknowledge of player counts), or maybe an option to transmute a Legendary token for a metallic-backed version once per year with a special code. Playing on a new difficulty with extra mechanics and getting a special survivor pin for being able to do it should already go a long way without needing an entire extra rewards system for it.

John Ohlinger (Salsa John) wrote:

Jeff Martin wrote: How about we create a separate XP Board for Mythic play?

Anytime you play on Mythic level you would get two XP codes with one for non-Mythic play (as is done now) and another code for the Mythic XP Board. We could have special rules and rewards unique to Mythic players. We could have, for example, allow folks to enter up to 2 codes (instead of the limit of 1 now) to get XP for playing Mythic. Level rewards could be cool pins like the 8th level pin we have now. Please share any thoughts you have about how Mythic XP could be handled differently than how it is run now. Thanks.

IMO In addition to the Mythic Track for XP it would be neat to have special Virtual Mythic Runs available for those who can play at the Mythic level. These runs could piggyback on the same weekend the Patron runs occur. This would be a reward for those who have spent the time and money to achieve Mythic builds.

I love the thought of having either a separate Mythic XP track or being able to add a second round of XP when completing a Mythic run. John's comments about having some special kind of run would be great as well. It could be a fun side event at something like Ring Con as well.

Iross wrote: Now that I've got a bit more time, let me write out my concerns with this in more detail.

Scenario 1: A player crafts a Safehold I, but they do not know many/any other players who have one. The player is unable to get a Mythic group together and misses out on the Mythic rewards despite having spent the sizable investment required to be eligible for them.

Scenario 2: A player crafts a Safehold I and knows multiple other players who have one. They all turn up for an adventure and use a few extra copies of Safehold I to pressure the other players into playing Mythic so they don't miss out on the Mythic rewards. The pressured players do not survive the adventure and have a generally poor experience.

Scenario 3: A player crafts a Safehold I and coordinates with other players via the forums to find other Mythic players and arrange runs. However, the number of players is not a multiple of 10 so there are some people who miss out on some or all of the adventures, missing out on the Mythic rewards.

All of these scenarios (and probably more which I haven't thought of) are only a problem due to the existence of exclusive rewards - rare completion tokens have taken the place of uncommon ones rather than being exclusive to higher difficulty levels for very similar reasons. Anything more significant than a survivor pin is likely to create situations where players resent missing out on them.

I would strongly encourage Mythic rewards to consist of a just a mythic survivor pin and other less-impactful rewards, possibly digital ones like forum badges or an annual exclusive virtual run like with the Patron codes (which would be adjustable for smaller groups based on foreknowledge of player counts), or maybe an option to transmute a Legendary token for a metallic-backed version once per year with a special code. Playing on a new difficulty with extra mechanics and getting a special survivor pin for being able to do it should already go a long way without needing an entire extra rewards system for it.

+1 I like the Mythic Survivor Pin and exclusive Mythic XP path (with exclusive Mythic XP Level rewards), anything more material than that could cause problems as mentioned above.

I’m sorry but all of those scenarios can happen right now when pugs trying to play NM or hardcore. I’m not sure who the target demo is that spends thousands to craft a SH1 and then wants to pug mythic (knows no one else, can’t coordinate on discord or forums, etc).

If they are crafting SH1 to play mythiic they will simply have to group with others and be social. If that can’t happen then I think we just live with that fact. In fact we are living with it right now with the same thing with higher difficulties.

When I started I played on pugs at conventions. After getting a little serious but still pugging I realized it’s super unreliable to even get hardcore. So I started talking to people, made friends, joined playgroups, and now play on NM or Epic every time. I don’t see how this is any different for mythic.

If Jeff’s goal is to cater/reward to the high end players then there can’t just be cosmetics at the end. People seem to be allergic to having actual new or rare or scarce token rewards so I think a new XP track is a great compromise. It doesn’t affect anyone playing the base game and to play mythic you are going to be spending upwards of $10,000 for just you.

People arguing against it either don't play higher levels DR Epic consistently or are using examples of other bad behavior to argue against. No wonder people leave TD.

edwin wrote: People arguing against it either don't play higher levels DR Epic consistently or are using examples of other bad behavior to argue against. No wonder people leave TD.

Perhaps someone that doesn't play it will have a more objective viewpoint than someone that does. It also seems useful to look at past problems in similar situations to see if they can be prevented from happening again.

Flik wrote: I’m sorry but all of those scenarios can happen right now when pugs trying to play NM or hardcore. I’m not sure who the target demo is that spends thousands to craft a SH1 and then wants to pug mythic (knows no one else, can’t coordinate on discord or forums, etc).

I'm not sure there's really much to be gained from comparing these given that Hardcore and Nightmare are vastly different scenarios.

Hardcore and Nightmare do not offer exclusive rewards only available on those difficulties, so it's not much of an issue if people play at a different difficulty instead. Moreover, the player base for those difficulties is immensely higher than Mythic so there is little difficulty in finding other players to arrange runs.

While a Mythic PUG is unlikely, someone who crafts a Safehold I not having access to a full group of 10 Mythic players doesn't seem like an unreasonable scenario.

Iross wrote:

Flik wrote: I’m sorry but all of those scenarios can happen right now when pugs trying to play NM or hardcore. I’m not sure who the target demo is that spends thousands to craft a SH1 and then wants to pug mythic (knows no one else, can’t coordinate on discord or forums, etc).

I'm not sure there's really much to be gained from comparing these given that Hardcore and Nightmare are vastly different scenarios.

Hardcore and Nightmare do not offer exclusive rewards only available on those difficulties, so it's not much of an issue if people play at a different difficulty instead. Moreover, the player base for those difficulties is immensely higher than Mythic so there is little difficulty in finding other players to arrange runs.

While a Mythic PUG is unlikely, someone who crafts a Safehold I not having access to a full group of 10 Mythic players doesn't seem like an unreasonable scenario.

It is good to outline past problems, but there are other alternatives to mitigate them to prevent them from occurring that can be discussed. A good first step should be to think about the ideal with only good players and then box it in with mitigations to prevent problems in my opinion.

We can avoid a forced mythic PUG scenario in many ways. I think the easiest being
"Must be player level 6 to play (Present Signet of Nobility)" as its a TE most will have in their binders.

Mythic players not having a large enough player base shouldn't be a reason to prevent Mythic from having items to look forward to. It should be sparking the discussion of "How do we on-board more players to this level" in my opinion at least.

Or if the point is exclusivity, that would be a feature, not a bug.

I think Mythic XP rewards in the vein of the level badges/medallions is a fantastic idea.

I would like to see something like the level 10 medallion that you could add items on to for a period. Perhaps that's the reward for a few years. Or alternatively, something akin to pokemon gym badges would be cool.

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This is a tangent, but I don't know of a better place to put it.

Earlier you mentioned a problem I understand of:
"Nightmare survivor pins have a high cost to value ratio"

I think a possible solution to this is to change the survivor reward at Nightmare+ to a survivor token akin to the "Thank You" Token.
It has zero in game effect. It does literally nothing. It is just something we can put in our level 10 medallions if we want.

Benefit: This keeps production chain simpler as it can now be a part of general token purchases, and should ideally dramatically reduce the cost of survivor rewards.
It also doesn't need to serve as advertising, as nightmare/epic/mythic on a badge does not help the marketing nature of the standard survivor pin at all imo.

You could also do a year end transmute for the survivor rewards to give a fun NO IN GAME EFFECT reward, like an enamel pin or a title related to that years events like:
"Survivor of Cravenwood" Nightmare
"Hero of Cravenwood" Epic
"Savior of Cravenwood" Mythic

All of this is a rough idea, but just things I think are neat that incur very little cost.

Impy wrote:

Iross wrote:

Flik wrote: I’m sorry but all of those scenarios can happen right now when pugs trying to play NM or hardcore. I’m not sure who the target demo is that spends thousands to craft a SH1 and then wants to pug mythic (knows no one else, can’t coordinate on discord or forums, etc).

I'm not sure there's really much to be gained from comparing these given that Hardcore and Nightmare are vastly different scenarios.

Hardcore and Nightmare do not offer exclusive rewards only available on those difficulties, so it's not much of an issue if people play at a different difficulty instead. Moreover, the player base for those difficulties is immensely higher than Mythic so there is little difficulty in finding other players to arrange runs.

While a Mythic PUG is unlikely, someone who crafts a Safehold I not having access to a full group of 10 Mythic players doesn't seem like an unreasonable scenario.

It is good to outline past problems, but there are other alternatives to mitigate them to prevent them from occurring that can be discussed. A good first step should be to think about the ideal with only good players and then box it in with mitigations to prevent problems in my opinion.

We can avoid a forced mythic PUG scenario in many ways. I think the easiest being
"Must be player level 6 to play (Present Signet of Nobility)" as its a TE most will have in their binders.

Mythic players not having a large enough player base shouldn't be a reason to prevent Mythic from having items to look forward to. It should be sparking the discussion of "How do we on-board more players to this level" in my opinion at least.

Or if the point is exclusivity, that would be a feature, not a bug.

I agree with the point about PUGs, but am mainly thinking about the situation where a player who puts in the effort to transmute Safehold I and is equipped for Mythic does not have access to a group of other Mythic players. For other difficulties that's not really an issue as the rewards are the same if you play at a lower difficulty, but for Mythic that's not planned to be the case. What I am suggesting is that the rewards for Mythic are either digital or are not something which makes a difference to gameplay, e.g. completion badges, alternate-backed tokens, a once per year Mythic-only VTD organised in the same way as patron runs, profile badges on the forums, etc.