TOPIC: Token Draw Happiness

I'm sure I'll post in more detail on True Dungeon this year (quick summary - fantastic!), but I wanted to share some thoughts on the token draws.

This was a great year for token drawing, I think it was the best mix of treasure tokens in the boxes other than the special mix that one year. It was great having a very real possibility of drawing a Relic, Ultra-Rare, large denomination GP token, or other wonderful tokens!

I think it was very generous of Jeff to give us such a great mix of tokens this year! I hope future years have a similar mix. I do realize the monster ingredient tokens were lower than the percentages Jeff mentioned earlier, and the Uncommon percentages are higher, but I'm sure he had very good reasons for that. Even with those differences the treasure mix was great!

My group drew over 550 tokens, and I'm very happy with the results. We got about 40% Rare, 40% Uncommon (almost the exact same amount of tokens of each), maybe 15% Monster ingredient tokens and 5% Special tokens. Due to random distribution, we were low in some categories (for instance, the largest GP token we got was one 1,000 GP), but we did well in other categories.

Jeff, thanks for giving us such great treasure this year, it was very much appreciated!

My monster bit percentage was about 13%.

35% would have been way high. 20% would have been great. But I'm pretty happy with what I got.

I like 5% special but I think there should be few if any relics. I think there should be at most one or two Legendary or Eldritch Relics. I personally saw or heard about 10+ of the big ones and 50+ relics.

If people can get big tokens fairly easily in the treasure box then why spend time and money collecting the ingredients and crafting them?

Kirk Bauer wrote: I like 5% special but I think there should be few if any relics. I think there should be at most one or two Legendary or Eldritch Relics. I personally saw or heard about 10+ of the big ones and 50+ relics.

If people can get big tokens fairly easily in the treasure box then why spend time and money collecting the ingredients and crafting them?

I'm OK with some Relics mixed in, the odds of pulling the exact Relic you were going to transmute is pretty slim. We pulled two Relics out of over 550 tokens, which was about average I think. I don't think there should be any Eldritch or Legendary Tokens in the treasure boxes at all though.

Mike Steele wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote: I like 5% special but I think there should be few if any relics. I think there should be at most one or two Legendary or Eldritch Relics. I personally saw or heard about 10+ of the big ones and 50+ relics.

If people can get big tokens fairly easily in the treasure box then why spend time and money collecting the ingredients and crafting them?

I'm OK with some Relics mixed in, the odds of pulling the exact Relic you were going to transmute is pretty slim. We pulled two Relics out of over 550 tokens, which was about average I think. I don't think there should be any Eldritch or Legendary Tokens in the treasure boxes at all though.

Heaven forbid we actually make the effort of making a Charm of Avarice worth it. Personally I applaud the distribution of the treasure box this year. The average player doesn't want or care about pulling a trade good for their treasure pulls why not let them have a chance at getting something that they would never actually get any other way. Because lets face it there are only a select few willing to pay the outrageous prices that the second hand token market has reached.

Acherin wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote: I like 5% special but I think there should be few if any relics. I think there should be at most one or two Legendary or Eldritch Relics. I personally saw or heard about 10+ of the big ones and 50+ relics.

If people can get big tokens fairly easily in the treasure box then why spend time and money collecting the ingredients and crafting them?

I'm OK with some Relics mixed in, the odds of pulling the exact Relic you were going to transmute is pretty slim. We pulled two Relics out of over 550 tokens, which was about average I think. I don't think there should be any Eldritch or Legendary Tokens in the treasure boxes at all though.

Heaven forbid we actually make the effort of making a Charm of Avarice worth it. Personally I applaud the distribution of the treasure box this year. The average player doesn't want or care about pulling a trade good for their treasure pulls why not let them have a chance at getting something that they would never actually get any other way. Because lets face it there are only a select few willing to pay the outrageous prices that the second hand token market has reached.

I know the prices of most Legendary, Relic, and Eldritch tokens seem extremely high, but in reality most of them actually sell for less than the cost of the ingredients that go into them. People buying them on the secondary market are often getting a bargain compared to the cost of buying the ingredients to make them. Of course, for many people that make them, they already have most of the ingredients needed to make them because of the large amount of tokens they already buy (often in excess of $10,000 per year, sometimes far more). And, if those people stopped buying tokens to get the ingredients to make these tokens, True Dungeon wouldn't have the revenue to exist in it's current form.

Oh I recognize the prices for legendary and relics and trust me I understand why they cost what they do. I have bought tokens from almost every person selling on the forums because I am willing to spend the money. Though I will say some UR have reached beyond what they should be priced at but thats another argument. The whole point I was trying to bring to light is we shouldn't be complaining about the existence of legendary tokens being in the treasure box just because it MIGHT slightly hurt the wallet of a very few select people. I like the idea of treasure pulls actually being treasure.

I seem to have almost all beholder eyes monster bits and would love to make at least two sets. If you are interested in swapping some please let me know.

Acherin wrote: The whole point I was trying to bring to light is we shouldn't be complaining about the existence of legendary tokens being in the treasure box just because it MIGHT slightly hurt the wallet of a very few select people. I like the idea of treasure pulls actually being treasure.

And to be clear, the wallet I'm concerned about here is True Adventures, not my own or other third-party sellers. Personally any negative offset for my token business has likely already been made up for by my awesome token draws

And I agree I like nice treasure draws, I'm just saying perhaps 1-2 Orbs, 1-2 Boots of the Four Winds, 1-2 Legendaries, and say 10 of each current Relic, might be more appropriate. From what I'm seeing it was probably 10 times that many (excluding the orbs; I'm not sure I have heard of anybody drawing one of those).

Relics and legendaries are expensive because the ingredients to make them add up. The recipes are designed, in part, to suck lots of tokens out of the TD economy.

So, many big collectors buy lots of tokens specifically to get the ingredients to make super tokens. In that sense, the price to make a relic or a legendary is set by Jeff. The price to buy one, however, is set by the market. As Mike says, it's always lower than the cost to make, at least while they're in print.

You don't hurt big buyers by driving down the value of relics. You actually make it so they don't have to buy so many tokens from Jeff to make them.

You don't think ticket sales covers the expenses, do you? My ignorant guess is that token sales far exceeds ticket sales, by at least a factor of two or three, so anything that discourages token sales means higher ticket prices or less cool sets and props, or fewer perqs for volunteers, so fewer volunteers, so fewer tickets.

So, sure, put a few jackpot tokens in the loot boxes. But if you put in too many, it could destroy the game. (And no, that's not hyperbole, as almost anyone who played in 2013 will attest.)

Aesop wrote a story about a goose who laid golden eggs. It applies.

First off I guess I have to crarify I am speaking objectively here not making personal attacks. But isn't the objective here to grow the player base and thus the game. Yes there are token buyers that spend a ridiculous amount of money and thats great for the game. Now take a second year player that has very little to no gear. Now that player goes and pulls an awsome token, is there not a better than average chance that this player catches a bit of the itch to collect more tokens. Maybe even orders them directly from True Adventures.

Also take if from the majority player base that only gets to ay once a year. If there is a higher percentage of relics in the treasure box then most players will at least get to see someone pull something other than a +1 Creeper Blade making it so its not just a myth to them that the relics do exist . And so they might actually be excited to try to pull one themselves and come back again year after year instead of being demoralized about the lackluster loot that they and everone around them are receiving.

And I am willing to bet the numbers for relic+ items aren't as dramatic as some are making them out to be. I also trust that Jeff knows what he is doing and we should be saying thank you for another amazing year not complaining.