TOPIC: New 2009 Purple tokens (speculation)

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<br />PyP IS power creep. If you get something random, you have no clue if it'll help your build. Being able to select is the fastest way to instill power creep because it gets people excatly what they need to maximize their character.<br />

<br /><br />Eh, I'd say the bigger problem of Power Creep is when Reds and Purps become increasingly powerful from year to year. Being able to select isn't that big of a problem if the pool of Reds and Purps are on par power-wise with previous Reds and Purps. But when they are better, then you see things like the rapidly climbing AC level.<br /><br />

<br /><br /><br />There's no climb if you never even get a hold of the token. Back in the day, you could have made purps whatever you wanted since so few people had access to them. Creep was functionally nonexistant. It only became a real problem with the advent of the PyP where people could mix and match. <br /><br />

I think PYP makes TD much more fun.  I'm not as concerned about power creep as others are.<br />

It's about the long term viability of token sales. If all people had to worry about was fun then it could be +10 vorpals for everyone. <br /><br />I guess we'll never know since we get no hint of the numbers, but I was sort of disturbed by how few people there were buying additional tokens this year at the event. It was hard to find anyone interested in trading anything unless it was a token they pulled from the dungeon. I have to wonder if that's because many of the low to mid level groups have decided to start opting out.

I guess it really just depends, its really not even the purps.  But the reds now.  Everyone is starting to accumulate everything they need as far as reds go, especially if they are returning players and have bought at least $1,000 worth of tokens the last couple of years.  Thats the problem I'm running into now, unless its something older that hasn't gotten reprinted within the past 2 years then I have it, in multiples, which made trading difficult for me.  Maybe Jeff and Dave should consider making a combo for rare trade ins, something that would be purp equivalent, much like the Medallion was this year.<br /><br />Back on topic...<br /><br />With the random purp you are going to find that token buying will be down from a low to mid buyer level and that the people who spend tons are still going to, trying to get the purps they want.  But you will also see token trading go up and more people willing to help one another out.<br /><br />With PYP you are going to see token sales go down, unless there is a very short number of returning purples.  The reason why, as many have touched on already, is because no one will need to buy as many because we will already have the purps we want.<br /><br />Without the PYP though there will be some people that get stuck with the purps that no one wants, unless they are a token collector.  Examples being the Hourglass this year, and the Scepter last year.  Its really a double edged sword, and the answer to both is to keep making new, useful, and exciting purps year after year.

<br />It's about the long term viability of token sales. If all people had to worry about was fun then it could be +10 vorpals for everyone. <br /><br />I guess we'll never know since we get no hint of the numbers, but I was sort of disturbed by how few people there were buying additional tokens this year at the event. It was hard to find anyone interested in trading anything unless it was a token they pulled from the dungeon. I have to wonder if that's because many of the low to mid level groups have decided to start opting out.<br />

<br /><br />I think that a LOT of people may have bought MORE tokens this year because of the GTs and STs, but they bought them BEFORE GenCon.  That's not a harm to long term sales, it's just a shift to when the sales are occurring.  From a financial standpoint, having the token sales occur before GenCon is beneficial to True Dungeon as a whole because it gives Jeff a pool of money to work from when building and designing the dungeon.  If the sales go very well, he can justify including cool FX like the demon/angel paint and the giant.  If sales are slower, then he knows he needs to scale back a bit.<br /><br />As for people not buying tokens because their character is "good enough", trading will cause that to happen anyway to those who have no interest in collecting.  The key to keeping token sales high is to retain the current collectors and try to convert new folks to the hobby.  PYP is an incentive to do that.  <br /><br />As for an incentive to get more people to buy tokens, I think the success of the GT run and the awesome rewards that were received by the GT players will definitely impact next year's token sales.  As was mentioned, stuff like the Skull of Doom and the Rod have moved into the place that was formerly held by the random purple. 

<br />I was sort of disturbed by how few people there were buying additional tokens this year at the event. It was hard to find anyone interested in trading anything unless it was a token they pulled from the dungeon. I have to wonder if that's because many of the low to mid level groups have decided to start opting out.<br />

  Maybe it is because a lot of the casual players have what they need.  <br /><br />It is quite easy to have acquired over a couple of years a good set of armor, a good weapon, and a few other items that make play fun and give you a good chance of survival.  A cleric can easily have an AC of 24 without any purple tokens and only 1 or 2 points of that is actual creep.  Platemail, large shield, bracers, and amulet of armor are all tokens that have been around since the days of the wooden nickels and those are all just red tokens.  Add in the ring of protection (which was downgraded from purple to red) and a plain old helmet and you easily get 24.  I'm sure that a lot of people are very happy going in with an AC of 22 on their cleric.  And given that so many of the tokens they would get out of a packet are repetitious in nature and the chances of getting a purple are a bit rare then why would they buy a lot of tokens?  The only ones who will really buy lots of tokens are for the most part the collectors and newbies.  If a newbie only does the $250 lot buy (even without the pick your purple program) a couple of times they will probably have more than enough tokens to outfit half of a group in such a manner that they will have a very good chance to survive regular True Dungeon runs and have a good chance of surviving a Nightmare Run.  Even without doing large buys a handful of runs and a handful of extra packets will generally make an individual player a character that is quite good.

Henry,<br />      I understand you were not able to trade as much as did in past years.  Did you do more trading inside the Tavern this year?  I having no luck trading inside the Tavern on Saturday but when I moved outside business picked up a lot.  I think next year I will do a lot more trading outside the tavern. 

That case weighed a ton so I left it inside on the first table. I would then roam around in and out of the tavern, mostly making a circle between the inside of the tavern and those 2 big tables outside near the escalator. I was really sort of disturbed by how few people I saw opening packs of tokens. Almost none other than the one they were given at the start of a run. In previous yers, there would be huge piles of plastic everywhere as people dug through packs everywhere.

Also people were able to buy single tokens in the dealer hall at the GamingEtc booth. So why trade when you can just as easily buy the tokens you want.<br />They had bins of tokens for 25 cents each that people could sort through, and up depending on rarity.<br />It's become easier for people to not trade at the event.

And people wonder why I think future token sales might be problematic.

Eventually your number of players levels out, and from there you are bound to hit a saturation point.<br />I mean just look at the case of True Arena, for a $2 game, there were complaints over Ultra Rare tokens as the prize. People don't value things the same. <br />2 years ago any ultra rare was a prize. On whole all tokens due to the sheer quantity are devalued.

I beg to differ. The UR gems were never really a prize. Well, only to Raven since she collected shinys. She was just about the only person willing to trade for them. For anyone else, it was only worth little more than the listed GP value pretty much.  I still have 2 750 GP diamonds around somewhere I never could manage to trade off.