TOPIC: The balance between treasure and stats

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Druegar wrote: Scenario: On Alternate Earth, one can equip all the same tokens we have here on Earth Prime. But in addition to those, Alternate Earth has a LOT more Treasure Enhancing tokens. So many so that one could literally equip at least a +3 TE in every single slot. These bonus TEs stack with everything, but give no other benefits.

If you had the opportunity to play TD on this Alternate Earth, where on the All Gear vs. All TEs spectrum would you stand? What non-TE gear could you not live without--if any? Would you enter a dungeon wearing nothing but TEs if it meant pulling ~100 treasure per run?

For the sake of this scenario, let's assume ghosting is not permitted and no slotless TEs exist.

If one of the reasons for this question was to see whether players would self-police their own loot cap, or show any restraint, I don’t think the answer is surprising, ghosts or no.

I don't think it's surprising either, although I don't think it's a negative. Most players have indicated all along that they will almost always choose a Treasure Enhancing token over one that doesn't give extra treasure. Every new TE UR is an automatic purchase of 10 for my group plus lots of extras.

Hmmm. I have a different take. There has been significant advocacy for a hard cap on treasure pulls. And recogninition that too many pulls will result in dilution of the pool. At the same time, people have said that where ever the number number goes they will go as well. But many of those people also recognize the likely negative consequences.

In other words, please save us from ourselves.

Harlax wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Druegar wrote: Scenario: On Alternate Earth, one can equip all the same tokens we have here on Earth Prime. But in addition to those, Alternate Earth has a LOT more Treasure Enhancing tokens. So many so that one could literally equip at least a +3 TE in every single slot. These bonus TEs stack with everything, but give no other benefits.

If you had the opportunity to play TD on this Alternate Earth, where on the All Gear vs. All TEs spectrum would you stand? What non-TE gear could you not live without--if any? Would you enter a dungeon wearing nothing but TEs if it meant pulling ~100 treasure per run?

For the sake of this scenario, let's assume ghosting is not permitted and no slotless TEs exist.

If one of the reasons for this question was to see whether players would self-police their own loot cap, or show any restraint, I don’t think the answer is surprising, ghosts or no.

I don't think it's surprising either, although I don't think it's a negative. Most players have indicated all along that they will almost always choose a Treasure Enhancing token over one that doesn't give extra treasure. Every new TE UR is an automatic purchase of 10 for my group plus lots of extras.

Hmmm. I have a different take. There has been significant advocacy for a hard cap on treasure pulls. And recogninition that too many pulls will result in dilution of the pool. At the same time, people have said that where ever the number number goes they will go as well. But many of those people also recognize the likely negative consequences.

In other words, please save us from ourselves.

It's not just us. I think TEs provide a similar conundrum for TPTB. On the one hand I think we can all acknowledge TEs provide a significant revenue stream for TD HQ. who knows how feasible it is for them to give that up. At some level though each new TE becomes slightly more expensive to maintain due to treasure outflow/transportation costs/etc. So assuming Jeff could afford to, just stop making them right? But that's not fair to the people joining the game later who never get a shot at one. Even the hard cap idea could hurt revenue as large buyers start to hit it. Bring in new big buyers from the other cons and you still have to deal with the issue of previous max TE folks stacking whatever you give the new whales with whatever they already have. Make the new items not stack and the usual suspects will raise hell. It's a conundrum for sure.

a cap though doesn’t stop the purchase of TE. Granted it slows it down, but there are those that once they reach the cap will still buy them to sell.
My biggest fear (as others have said) is that it feels like this past year the pool of treasure was HEAVILY diluted from the previous year. If getting 2 more treasures means Jeff throws in 1 more rare and 1 more uncommon to account for that times the number of 2 more treasure players then it feels like you Have to buy TE’s just to stay even. I personally would rather invest in my token budget in tokens that will help my party but i do feel i have to get the TE’s to pull enough stuff to be able to transmute all the things i want to transmute, since the cost of transmutes also seems to be going up. Since ticket prices are going up I am playing less. Getting more puulls per play but less pulls overall at more of a ticket cost per play....it feels like a losing battle. So I imagine soon I will give up, sell off all my TE’s. Drop to playing just a couple runs with my friends at Gen Con (because that is the con they are at) and have fun dropping into the shadows. I was very close to doing just that before this past GHC.

Picc wrote:

Harlax wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Druegar wrote: Scenario: On Alternate Earth, one can equip all the same tokens we have here on Earth Prime. But in addition to those, Alternate Earth has a LOT more Treasure Enhancing tokens. So many so that one could literally equip at least a +3 TE in every single slot. These bonus TEs stack with everything, but give no other benefits.

If you had the opportunity to play TD on this Alternate Earth, where on the All Gear vs. All TEs spectrum would you stand? What non-TE gear could you not live without--if any? Would you enter a dungeon wearing nothing but TEs if it meant pulling ~100 treasure per run?

For the sake of this scenario, let's assume ghosting is not permitted and no slotless TEs exist.

If one of the reasons for this question was to see whether players would self-police their own loot cap, or show any restraint, I don’t think the answer is surprising, ghosts or no.

I don't think it's surprising either, although I don't think it's a negative. Most players have indicated all along that they will almost always choose a Treasure Enhancing token over one that doesn't give extra treasure. Every new TE UR is an automatic purchase of 10 for my group plus lots of extras.

Hmmm. I have a different take. There has been significant advocacy for a hard cap on treasure pulls. And recogninition that too many pulls will result in dilution of the pool. At the same time, people have said that where ever the number number goes they will go as well. But many of those people also recognize the likely negative consequences.

In other words, please save us from ourselves.

It's not just us. I think TEs provide a similar conundrum for TPTB. On the one hand I think we can all acknowledge TEs provide a significant revenue stream for TD HQ. who knows how feasible it is for them to give that up. At some level though each new TE becomes slightly more expensive to maintain due to treasure outflow/transportation costs/etc. So assuming Jeff could afford to, just stop making them right? But that's not fair to the people joining the game later who never get a shot at one. Even the hard cap idea could hurt revenue as large buyers start to hit it. Bring in new big buyers from the other cons and you still have to deal with the issue of previous max TE folks stacking whatever you give the new whales with whatever they already have. Make the new items not stack and the usual suspects will raise hell. It's a conundrum for sure.

I do agree about the dilemma for True Dungeon, if they stop making new TEs or put a cap on TEs they might get less Token Sales revenue, which as you say we don't have much visibility into how well TD can handle that revenue hit. On the other hand, higher amounts of TE tokens means a permanent TD cost of providing more treasure box loot at each Dungeon. We don't know how much per token that costs TD. And we really don't have the cost info (nor should we) to know how the added revenue from TE sales balances the cost of extra Treasure Box loot.

Another factor though, that I've thought over the years, is higher amounts of loot may actually help with player retention. If someone is getting more treasure pulls for each Dungeon, that may make them be more willing to keep playing True Dungeon, and to do more Dungeons at each Convention (including Ghost players). It might also make them more likely to be willing to absorb the increasing ticket prices. That's another factor that TD might take into consideration when deciding whether to continue to make new uncapped TE tokens or not.

It will be interesting to see what direction things go in 2023 with the post-Nugget TE.

Jeff could handle the increase cost of extra transport in an easy way though i have no clue on cheaper. You get 3 treasure at whatever the con is and a coupon code for orderring your extra treasure from the td store. you pay real shipping cost for that treasure not the $5 he charges (unless maybe you are ordering something else). People would not like it for sure, but he would not have to lug extra treasure to the cons. It would create more work back at TD which is why i don’t know if it would be cheaper than the space it occupies in the semis when transported to cons.

Not saying this is a good idea, just that there are ways to deal with extra treasure going to cons.

From my perspective (group has been playing since 2015, but only in 2018 did we get "serious") the existing TEs have caused such a dilution that we are required to buy them just to be able to make the cycle items, like the bead. At 4 pulls per player (of 5 players) running each adventure once, we just didn't draw enough monster bits. If no treasure enhancers existed, I have to imagine we would have drawn enough, and 2019 wouldnt require new bits.

All told, it's a tax that mostly makes money for the secondary market, not TD.

jedibcg wrote: Jeff could handle the increase cost of extra transport in an easy way though i have no clue on cheaper. You get 3 treasure at whatever the con is and a coupon code for orderring your extra treasure from the td store. you pay real shipping cost for that treasure not the $5 he charges (unless maybe you are ordering something else). People would not like it for sure, but he would not have to lug extra treasure to the cons. It would create more work back at TD which is why i don’t know if it would be cheaper than the space it occupies in the semis when transported to cons.

Not saying this is a good idea, just that there are ways to deal with extra treasure going to cons.

I wasn't talking about the extra cost of transporting the Treasure Box loot, I was talking about the cost of actually purchasing the extra Treasure Box loot. I don't know how much TD pays per token, I'm sure they must get the biggest bulk discount possible.

Although you're correct, transport costs of both being shipped from the manufacturer and Jeff getting it to Cons might also play a role, as does the cost of mixing up the treasure box loot, doing 50 token bags, etc.

If I "had a chance" to play on AE, I'd run all TEs. The irony of this is that I don't even like treasure pulls, only ever enjoying, to my recollection, the in dungeon treasure back when that was a thing.

Part of the reason is that I don't really care about having cool equipment in the same way others might, either. TD is still mostly about discovery and puzzle solving to me, with combat often being boring**. Sure, I'll consider playing a monk with a 60 DEX, but that's because I'm more interested in the idea than the practice.

** A post for another time, perhaps.

So, I dimension hop to a new world, play TD to get fat loots, then hop back to this plane of existence to continue to play games because that's what the ability to traverse the multiverse is for.

Let's say that you had to choose one world or the other as your only TD outlet. I may be used to all TE all of the time to where I didn't think anything of it, but it seems like the inability to TE all of the time would be way more fun - I vastly prefer Grind builds just not the Grind experience.

While probably bad for TD's growth, I would have found TD more fun after I started picking up TEs if there were no TEs at all. A fair range of pulls IMO would have been 3-6, so the hard cap would have been ... 6. Severe dilution seems to have occurred a couple of years ago after the massive expansion of TE use, so it's not like dilution is theoretical.

Of course, if I were to get more casual players excited by pulls and not maintain a rich get richer system, I'd ditch uncommons from treasure boxes, increase the number of red and blue not only to cover uncommons being gone but take away more high end stuff as what seemed to be the case - this would only devalue my current ability to get extra treasure pulls, btw, as the dilution in recent years did.

For me the first run would take up all my no optimization slots like most of my ioun and one of my charms, the rest would be normal set, if playing cleric I would only keep my healing items the rest would be treasures because there are a ton of slotless items that are a benefit. I can make a character with a weapon and slotless items that can survive normal.

I guess I just don't completely buy into the whole idea that putting a cap on treasure draws will suddenly cause big time token buyers to stop buying new tokens. I tend to believe that the real impact would be that they end up only buying 19 of the newest TE instead of 20 now that they aren't putting one aside for personal use.

That being said, I suppose they could look to 2015 sales figures to see how printing a new non-stacking TE impacts sales and whether or not they saw a drastic drop in big orders?

Azzy wrote: I guess I just don't completely buy into the whole idea that putting a cap on treasure draws will suddenly cause big time token buyers to stop buying new tokens.

I think Mike Steele's point (correct me if I'm wrong) is that almost everyone spends PYP money on at least one of each URTE. That's a lot of money. And a cap on treasure would reduce demand for the new TEs, and thus lower total sales. I'd set aside fewer URs for myself and sell more PYPs, which reduces overall demand.

I think there are two kinds of players. Those on unlimited budgets might be buying extra URTEs in addition to their regular orders. Those on a limited budget might be buying them instead of other URs they'd like. If (for example) 100 URTEs were sold one year, in another alternate universe where they didn't exist, would sales have been -100 URs? or would it have only been maybe -10 URs, because most people replaced it with something else? (Personally, I've recently migrated from the first group to the second.)

We'll never know for sure, because there's been a URTE in print every year since 2007 (except 2009-10). I guess Jeff could look at the second year they're in print and if there's a correlation between total sales vs URTE sales. But there are so many other variables. There was a lot of demand for the Hammer last year, and it might have made up for the Nuggets being in their second year. Or not. For the rest of us, it's pure conjecture.

For the record, I fall in the category of harping against constant rising treasure caps for years. And, I equip every cursed URTE that comes out, and I'm likely to continue to do so. With rising ticket prices, it's the only way I can afford to sponsor free newbie runs. So, rising caps help me introduce newbies to the game, but are bad for the game for many other reasons. They're probably getting close to net-negative benefit territory.

Azzy wrote: I guess I just don't completely buy into the whole idea that putting a cap on treasure draws will suddenly cause big time token buyers to stop buying new tokens. I tend to believe that the real impact would be that they end up only buying 19 of the newest TE instead of 20 now that they aren't putting one aside for personal use.

That being said, I suppose they could look to 2015 sales figures to see how printing a new non-stacking TE impacts sales and whether or not they saw a drastic drop in big orders?

I don't think looking at the AoTF is an accurate look at what would happen with a non-stacking or reprint TE. The HoP was so scarce at that point that for a bunch of players the AoTF was their first neck slot TE. More importantly though, a TON of AoTF were purchased in order to transmute CoA.