TOPIC: NIghtmare Mandate - Beating an almost dead horse

commanderFuron wrote: I think renaming it veterans Only instead of Nightmare in the name of the listing would make it perfectly clear.

Seras wrote: the language describing Nightmare could be more clear

But those suggestions assume people read descriptions and, I'm sad to say, the majority of them apparently do not.

Seras wrote: TD could put a player level requirement on the event, like they do with Grind

Incognito/Raven, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe newbies with a single pack of tickets frequently show up for Grind.

I mean change the name not the description, so the title is Veterans Only True Dungeon

Or maybe include "You are going to die. Seriously, a gruesome painful lingering death. No really, they will need a spatula to clear your characters remains from the dungeon" in the title.

I wonder if the GenCon system could support the following model.

Create X number of Nightmare Tickets for a Day per Dungeon (so if you allowed 8 NM runs/day 80 tickets x number of dungeon 4, so 320 NM tickets for Saturday). Then have it be a pooled run that would run on certain times, if the team was not full then it did not go until the next time slot for NM.

If new players buy these tickets they can be pooled with the under-prepared and sent in on the next supposed NM slot while those who are NM geared can wait for the next team to assemble.

It means those who really want a solid NM team can wait for the numbers and gear if they wish, otherwise they can go with a "lower" difficulty if time is more valuable than the XP.

The event could read: First come first full group served running on the 15 of every hour. Show up in the muster, with gear and find like minded souls, once a team of 10 is assembled the next slot will be available.

The Pro of this is it clearly makes the event something that could take all day if you do not have a group plan to begin with, but allows the flexibility of those who just do not read descriptions to still get a game.

Not sure if I am explaining this well, but that is my thought.

Basically it is a reverse draft, the players show up, and queue up in line based on gear and as soon as a line has 10 players they go into the next supposedly-NM run.

If you don't have the gear for NM then stand in the slower (or faster as it sounds like) filling Normal or Hardcore line and hope you get 10 more. The last two runs of the day (8:15 and 9:15 for example) takes those left in incomplete lines and merges them to a negotiated difficulty and sends them in.

greyseer wrote: I wonder if the GenCon system could support the following model.

Create X number of Nightmare Tickets for a Day per Dungeon (so if you allowed 8 NM runs/day 80 tickets x number of dungeon 4, so 320 NM tickets for Saturday). Then have it be a pooled run that would run on certain times, if the team was not full then it did not go until the next time slot for NM.

If new players buy these tickets they can be pooled with the under-prepared and sent in on the next supposed NM slot while those who are NM geared can wait for the next team to assemble.

It means those who really want a solid NM team can wait for the numbers and gear if they wish, otherwise they can go with a "lower" difficulty if time is more valuable than the XP.

The event could read: First come first full group served running on the 15 of every hour. Show up in the muster, with gear and find like minded souls, once a team of 10 is assembled the next slot will be available.

The Pro of this is it clearly makes the event something that could take all day if you do not have a group plan to begin with, but allows the flexibility of those who just do not read descriptions to still get a game.

Not sure if I am explaining this well, but that is my thought.

Basically it is a reverse draft, the players show up, and queue up in line based on gear and as soon as a line has 10 players they go into the next supposedly-NM run.

If you don't have the gear for NM then stand in the slower (or faster as it sounds like) filling Normal or Hardcore line and hope you get 10 more. The last two runs of the day (8:15 and 9:15 for example) takes those left in incomplete lines and merges them to a negotiated difficulty and sends them in.

Would never work, because you could never plan anything. Oops your 8:15 slot wasn't NM ready, now you wait until 9:15. Oh, you have another event at 11:00? You either give up your 44 dollar TD ticket, and possibly leave the 9:15 group short handed, or you skip your other event.

I am one of those folks who almost certainly won't do Nightmare. Part of it is a lack of tokens, and part is a lack of interest. I don't really need an uncommon and rare token in a single run. I wouldn't even want to try it given some of the attitudes I've seen in this thread towards those who don't have enough UR+ tokens.

Having said that, here's a suggestion to help with the problem of needing to find enough Nightmare people to fill an entire run. Make it possible to do Nightmare on a per-person basis. Rather than increasing the monster's AC and saving throws, lower the player's attack bonus and DCs. Rather than increasing the monster's attack and damage, have the player take a penalty to defenses and take extra damage. A player who's going Nightmare can wear something on the character cards so that the room DMs can see who wants the extra challenge.

Most of this can be done in the coaching room, and as always, it's the player's responsibility to accurately track damage done to himself or herself. It isn't a perfect solution - the chance of a TPK isn't as high - but it's better than having to choose between going Hardcore (or lower), or a nigh-inevitable TPK.

Druegar wrote: Incognito/Raven, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe newbies with a single pack of tickets frequently show up for Grind.

Occasionally.

The tickets are pretty hard to get tho, so they tend to be snapped up on Registration Day by people who have already played TD and know they want this event. I'd say that we get "single digits" of brand new players. Luckily, when the majority of the group is veteran players, they can usually cover the newbies.

I remember for True Arena - with the very clear description that this was for level 2 and up - we'd still get people who'd never played before signing up. They see the words "True Dungeon" on the event description, see that it fits into their schedule, and grab the ticket.

Jim Auwaerter wrote: I am one of those folks who almost certainly won't do Nightmare. ...I wouldn't even want to try it given some of the attitudes I've seen in this thread towards those who don't have enough UR+ tokens.

I'm sorry to hear you feel that way.

I personally feel a pang of regret when I think of all the masses of TD players who (rightfully) balk at the expense of even a single ultra-rare, much less a relic or more.

For this reason, I've been working for a few years on a side project I call "Garrison's Red Book" (kind of a play on "Kelly Blue Book"), which is basically a short strategy guide listing the top 20-30 items for each class (Rare or lower, hence the "Red"), as well as general strategy, and so on. The idea is to provide something to the community for those players who want to get into TD fairly strongly but don't want to make an obsession about it. I think there is currently a huge jump between "enthusiastic player" and "token whore", and I'd like to help fill in that gap. Honestly, for the price of a single ultra-rare you can probably gather enough rare tokens to make yourself almost just as powerful as a purped-out player for any class. For truly, what much difference does a single +1 to hit and +1 to damage give you? Certainly not worth the dollar value of the UR tokens, I say.

But back to the main point of the thread. I throw out there the option to increase the price of Nightmare runs. Reduce the max party size, while increasing the price of an individual ticket so that the overall price for a full run remains about the same. I personally suspect that those who prefer Nightmare also prefer role-playing and thus, in general, would enjoy smaller party sizes.

This would certainly reduce the number of unprepared people who show up for the Nightmare runs, at least a bit. The fact that the runs are labeled Nightmare also reduces the chances of unprepared people signing up. Perhaps together, the problem will be minimized.

Even if a few clueless people still sign up for a Nightmare run, there will be enough veterans present that the newbie will likely be inundated with loaner power-ups enough to make their presence a contribution instead of a liability.

Just an idea. Not sure if it's good. Just trying to add to the discussion.

Garrison wrote: I throw out there the option to increase the price of Nightmare runs. Reduce the max party size, while increasing the price of an individual ticket so that the overall price for a full run remains about the same. I personally suspect that those who prefer Nightmare also prefer role-playing and thus, in general, would enjoy smaller party sizes.

I like this idea.

Also, I'm intrigued by your red book. Could you post what you have some day?

I challenge the thought that those that like nightmare also prefer role-playing. Also having a larger party doesn't by itself have anything to do with ability to role-play. Sorry just playing devil's advocate.

I don't know that you need to increase the price to make parties smaller when that can be done already by just buying a slot. I bought 4 runs of 10 last year and only 1 of them was full of 10 people. I had the option though to run them with whatever number and whatever difficulty I (and those with me) chose. Increasing the price and reducing the number of nightmare runs may be popular with some but you exclude those that like the 10 party group when they are not forcing you to play in one so I don't see what it gains. Again just playing Devil's Advocate.

True enough. But increasing the price will reduce the chance that unprepared people will sign up for Nightmare, and thus increase the chance that a Nightmare run will, in fact, be run as Nightmare.

Adeya, I'm afraid it's in a pretty messy state at this point, barely more than a bunch of charts comparing the average DPR of all the weapons thus far, and listing the top options for each class. I doubt many people on the forums would learn anything from it they were not already aware of. But hopefully I will give it more attention in the coming months and will certainly post on the forums if it becomes something more than misc. notes in a doc file.

Wow the love for Team Synergy really shines here =) Thanks Brad, David and Harlax!

As far as how we typically arrange runs is pretty simple; each of us grabs as many runs as we can in an allotted timeslot on an allotted day and then we have a list of what we got.

From there we simply make forum posts and try to fill the rosters.

The person who purchases the tickets has final say on difficulty and the form post will reflect this. People who wont play at that difficulty are excluded from the run (though to date this has never happened that im aware of *YET*).

This year we may be doing things a bit differently and may change up to a first come first served basis as organizing runs last year was a very daunting task and financially this year I will not be able to sponsor as many (if any) runs.

More to come soon hopefully and a lot will probably be based on how nightmare runs are handled - if we had a vote, D, I'd say keep it the same as last year as changing up to Nightmare was as easy as telling the GM (and so long as we had total party agreement, again, which was discussed ahead of time).

NOTE: I think I may have missed the boat on this thread as I just saw this now instead of 3 weeks ago