TOPIC: Player Replacement Policies

Harlax wrote: I give a lot of credit to the brave souls who buy out runs. There are all kind of glitches that can leave them holding the bag for a ticket. Or tickets.

My plan is to keep a lot of treasure-enhancing tokens with me when I do this, so worst case I get a bunch of treasure

This year I had one run where I was stuck with two tickets, so I equipped the ghost with a RoR, HoP, CoGF, etc... then we only got one stamp. Lesson: don't run ghost characters the first time through a puzzle run with a bunch of random players

Picc wrote: Sidebar to the wristband issue, would it help at all if folks who were running late presigned wavers and sent them along with the ticket holder?

I tried doing this for one of my runs this year. They wouldn't take the waiver until I personally was there to turn in the ticket with the waiver.

Can I make a suggestion here?

Instead of having the late policy hidden in the coaches guide on page 14,
why not have laminated copies at each of the registration tables?

It would make life easier for the Hostesses and Coaches if they could just point to the printed copy of the policy if someone starts to complain.

George wrote: Can I make a suggestion here?

Instead of having the late policy hidden in the coaches guide on page 14,
why not have laminated copies at each of the registration tables?

It would make life easier for the Hostesses and Coaches if they could just point to the printed copy of the policy if someone starts to complain.

The policy in question being what?

Raven wrote: Now... I'll bet everyone here agrees with that, because we're not the ones standing around for hours, hoping to get a run via WaitList. I'd really like to get more wait-listed folks into TD for runs. I'm sure many of us got our first run via WaitList, or have stood in that line at some point. We know how frustrating it is to be standing around, doing nothing, until we luck out with an empty slot.

I agree it is important for TD to be newbie friendly and to give more people the opportunity to try it.

And in past years (before the 4th dungeon) when TD tickets sold out really quickly, I would tend to agree with you.

However last year and this year, there has been an abundant supply of tickets up until the start of GenCon (and even during GenCon due to last minute returns). Yeah being on the Wait List is frustrating but I would guess that 9 times out of 10, the person could have found/bought a ticket beforehand and avoided the entire wait.

Possibly exceptions might be people who just discovered TD that year. Or people who wanted to buy their badge onsite (but even then you could go on the forums and "buy" a spot from someone trying to sell their ticket).

Hopefully this does not sound condescending but as someone who goes through the hassle of Event Registration every year (as many of you do as well), I am not particularly sympathetic to those who skip Event Registration and don't bother buying tickets over the next few months prior to GenCon, and then complain about waiting on the wait list!

jtillots wrote: I do dislike the policy because it puts all the risk on the players, and it is not a good risk. There are lots of examples of players being gypped.

I am not personally offended. But I do want to point out that some people consider "gypped" to be a racist slur.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

George wrote: Can I make a suggestion here?

Instead of having the late policy hidden in the coaches guide on page 14,
why not have laminated copies at each of the registration tables?

It would make life easier for the Hostesses and Coaches if they could just point to the printed copy of the policy if someone starts to complain.

The policy in question being what?

Sorry but I have to say do you not know how to open the Coaches Guide and turn to page 14 and look at it? Again sorry if that is harsh.

The waitlist isn't just for new players though. I have joined the waitlist the past 3 or 4 years just to go on one more run (usually with one of my friends that cannot make it one of my dedicated runs). I know lots of people harp on PUG groups but I enjoy them from time to time. I find them to be less stressful (generally) because I am not worried if they are having a good time or getting frustrated with each other as I do my friends.

So as someone that has waited on the waitlist a few times I know it is a waitlist and have no issues waiting until 18 minutes after the start time. I will play anything if needed. The wait times (at least when I have been waiting) have been a lot shorter as well. If I don't get in a game no biggie. I hope all waitlisters understand that. Get tickets early as Eric says. The rest of us are able to do it.

The whole issue could be resolved if there were some way for players to log into the TD site and digitally sign a waiver for the ticket spots on a given run or if the collection of waivers were moved to the Coach and wristbands were handled as they are now so players can pre-gather wristbands and not have to worry about their tickets being sold out from under them.

A waiver wristband for the weekend would also go a long way to resolve this.

Since this thread is out here and active I'll repost my solution to this problem. I originally posted it in the Volunteer section since that is where I think it applied the most.

Solution is fairly simple.
Accepting that TD is contractually obligated to acquire a signed waiver for every person that goes on a run for each run they go on(yes weird but whatever) the BEST person to count waivers is actually the training coach, not the player coach and certainly not the wrist band person.

At the point you're walking into the training room those are the number of participants and those are the people that should have waivers before being allowed to continue. Wrist bands don't = players.

This will ensure that anyone who actually buys a ticket can get the wrist band they are due, even if the player they are holding it for is late.

The player coach might be too busy but the training coach can take a moment to collect signed waivers or have people sign the blanks they have available there.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: The whole issue could be resolved if there were some way for players to log into the TD site and digitally sign a waiver for the ticket spots on a given run or if the collection of waivers were moved to the Coach and wristbands were handled as they are now so players can pre-gather wristbands and not have to worry about their tickets being sold out from under them.

A waiver wristband for the weekend would also go a long way to resolve this.

How would this resolve a late player? Isn't that where most of the issues arrive from. Now it is a question of how late, but I fail to see how pre-signing a waiver would solve this? Maybe I am missing something. Is anyone claiming TD was saying tickets before the listed start time on the ticket? If so then again why would a signed waiver prevent this. I agree if you have the ticket without a player TD should be accommodating which according to their policy they seem to be. If they are not following that policy that is another issue.

jedibcg wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

George wrote: Can I make a suggestion here?

Instead of having the late policy hidden in the coaches guide on page 14,
why not have laminated copies at each of the registration tables?

It would make life easier for the Hostesses and Coaches if they could just point to the printed copy of the policy if someone starts to complain.

The policy in question being what?

Sorry but I have to say do you not know how to open the Coaches Guide and turn to page 14 and look at it? Again sorry if that is harsh.

The waitlist isn't just for new players though. I have joined the waitlist the past 3 or 4 years just to go on one more run (usually with one of my friends that cannot make it one of my dedicated runs). I know lots of people harp on PUG groups but I enjoy them from time to time. I find them to be less stressful (generally) because I am not worried if they are having a good time or getting frustrated with each other as I do my friends.

So as someone that has waited on the waitlist a few times I know it is a waitlist and have no issues waiting until 18 minutes after the start time. I will play anything if needed. The wait times (at least when I have been waiting) have been a lot shorter as well. If I don't get in a game no biggie. I hope all waitlisters understand that. Get tickets early as Eric says. The rest of us are able to do it.

Yes, I could probably navigate the site, find the page, open the PDF and scroll like mad to attempt to find the specific policy *remember that not everyone accesses this forum from a computer, I tend to also use my phone*

You could just just as simply posted the policy in your response instead of jumping on me for not searching it up myself. And in the end we'd have actually seen the policy in question.

Raven wrote: The gray area is where you say "If someone is going to be late" ... We encountered situations where the hostess was made aware that a player was going to be late, but the slot was given away anyways. We were not given any choice to turn in tickets/get wristbands/run with ghosts.

A lot of the time, when someone is going to be late they know about it ahead of time. They know their volunteer schedule or other scheduled event is going to conflict with their run time.

In such cases, it is sometimes possible to check in early. I usually do that myself, though I recognize that things are easier since I am a TD/Grind volunteer. Usually they let me check in early and get my wristband. Sometimes they don't (if the wristbands aren't ready yet) but at least I can inform them I will be late.

Also, if you know you will be late then you really should have your character stats prepped beforehand. (Or stats for several possible characters if you don't know which class you will play). And if you will miss the coaching time, you will want to make sure you get the stats to someone else in the party.

kurtreznor wrote: my understanding of the extra packs for ghost tickets; it was being done because there was no wait-list to fill from. it was an incentive to turn in the ticket that you couldn't sell.

jedibcg wrote: There should not need to be incentive to ghost though. You are already getting stuff for you ticket. I can understand incentive for people that were not going to play and just turning in your ticket for packs which I saw happen before Sunday. Dunno. I thought it was odd.

I agree with jedibcg. They should not be creating additional incentives to ghost, or more and more people will be doing that just for the tokens.

Some people are already ghosting because they want the challenge, or they think 10 people is too crowded, or they want to maximize tokens with a given amount of time. If you are offering additional incentives (extra extra tokens) you are going to encourage people to do more of this.

In one of my runs I was a bit confused because even though we had 10 people, apparently one of the party members somehow managed to purchase an 11th ghost ticket - solely so he/she could get extra treasure.

Policy in Question

Minutes Late/ Player Gave Notification/ Action
3 no Attempt to fill slot
3 yes Wait for player

18 irrelevant Attempt to fill slot
36 irrelevant Player may not join party in dungeon

So by this policy we should have NO attempts to fill the spot of a guaranteed missing player until 18 minutes late. This seems pretty fair.

I would suggest adding 1 thing to this policy.

IF the missing player's ticket is in hand at the 18 minute mark allow the ticket holder to turn in the ticket as a Ghost BEFORE attempting to fill the open space.

While players do wait list a lot of players pre-build their parties and would be upset at both having a ticket invalidated (as refunds CAN NOT be given per GenCon policy) and having the party composition altered at the last moment, not to mention the possibility of having the random PUG refuse to allow a HC or NM group to run on their pre-selected difficulty level thus upsetting 9 other players.