TOPIC: Official Statement on Treasure Enhancers

Kirk Bauer wrote: I 100% agree with making sure the treasure enhancers stay on the run in which they are being used. I 100% agree with checking them physically in the epilogue room. I am NOT convinced it is a good idea to discourage the lending of tokens within a party, however.

First of all, many people have full sets of 10 CoAs and now 10 Silver Nuggets solely for the situation where they are in a party full of people without treasure-enhancers. Before the CoA I just had a set of 10 Charms of Good Fortune to make sure I got my full synergy bonus, and other players also got a free 4 treasure pulls. This change will likely cause a decline in the purchase of future treasure-enhancing tokens, but I'm not sure how much.

Secondly, I was going to do this year what I did last year. I was going to find 9 complete strangers who have never played TD. I was going to buy all of their tickets and they were going to run for free. They would get the same 3 treasure pulls they would have normally received, and I was going to keep the rest to cover the cost of the run. I think this was a great way to introduce new players to TD (two from last year are hooked). With this change I likely won't be doing this again.

Thirdly, with the synergy bonus, us veteran players are going to be more encouraged to only play with other veteran players and friends who already have treasure enhancers or you are OK loaning one to. This may lead the veteran players to be more cliquey, largely sticking to the people they know.

On the other hand, I absolutely don't like hearing about a veteran wheeling and dealing in the coaching room with newer players about loaning of treasure-enhancing tokens and the following treasure draws. I also think that those of us who lend treasure-enhancers to strangers do kind of de-value the treasure draws.

I hope this doesn't impact the ability to ghost and collect treasure for the ghosts.

Wow - look at all these worms! Imagine how big the can was!

I don't have much of a problem with the policy as Jeff stated, but I understand the complications that will ensue. At least at GC they would usually have at least two volunteers for each epilogue room (if not more).

I feel I don't have much to say about this. I have a CoA and an IS:SN, but I only equip myself. As an AC with very limited time, I tend to do my runs with veteran players I know from the forums.

Thank you, Jeff, for being willing to listen to our concerns and take them into account.

Obviously, anything involving TEs is a sensitive subject based on the number of posts the topic generates. I appreciate that Jeff is trying to address some of the problems noted on these boards. Overall, I'm fine with the changes, but then I pretty much just have a COA and IS:SN for myself. I do have one extra Amulet of Treasure Finding that I lend to a close friend, so no issue there. On occasion, I have loaned it to strangers who had nothing else for their neck slot, but I always let them keep the extra treasure. I highly doubt I would do that going forward, but that's no loss to me except for the goodwill it might have generated.

I also can appreciate some of the concern those with 10 COAs might be feeling. I used to provide builds for a party of 10 friends and to an extent still help them out, but after having them lose 1 UR weapon and having near losses on a couple of other occasions I stopped doing that. Tokens can be a big investment and any time they exchange hands there is a potential (no matter how small) of something getting lost or misplaced. I know my dungeon runs are much more relaxed if the tokens are in my possession. At least if I lose it that's just on me.

Ive seen multiple mentions of ghosting on this thread, and i would like to request that it not be outright banned. If it needs some limitation, i suggest either a treasure cap on ghosts (perhaps 10 max) or limit each player to only one ghost can get treasue.

I personally like the one ghost per person option because then we avoid the question/argument of what the cap should be and the difficulty of administering it. But i also realize the one ghost per person rule is perfect for me...so more input is welcome.

For me, there have been two scenarios i have ghosted a ticket:
1. 5 person run. Each person has two tickets so you can have a small party. The ghost treasue helps mitigate the $100+ price of doing this.
2. Our group has all 10 tickets but is missing a person (often due to cancellation). I would prefer to find someone for this ticket, but we need someone who agrees with our already selected difficulty and classes. If we dont find a person, we ghost the ticket to avoid a random walk-on that could ruin our plans.

TD is a complex economy. You can't make changes without consequences.

For years, some of us argued for a loot cap. We were laughed off or shouted down. We were told there was no problem, and would be no problem, for a very long time. I once asked if, hypothetically, a thousand-chip loot cap was too high and I was told by one person 'no' (!)

One ISSN later, and suddenly it's a huuge problem.

I agree with BC. What does it matter if one person keeps 190 or splits them up however they all agree? This isn't the USSR. We own our tokens, we don't lease them from TDA, and it's restraint of trade to try to dictate too much of how we use them. (There is no legal reason why we shouldn't be able to rent tokens to other people for cash, but Jeff asked us not to and the consensus is that it would be bad for the game, so we don't.)

"We have to add more URTEs, they generate revenue!" That was true when a lot of people got ten to share with their parties. I guess that's over now.

For years we've shared tokens, TE and non-TE, openly and guilt-free. Steele outfits nine friends every year, top to bottom, and is the only one in the group buying any. So yes, Rob, if he stops, so do they. But guess what? If you make it too hard or frustrating for him to keep sharing with his friends, maybe he stops sooner than he would have. How is that a good thing?

The archives are full of posts stating "join our group, we have 10 CoAs/HoPs/whatever." And nobody ever said a word about it being a problem until now. I think that's what has some people up in arms. The implied contract has suddenly changed in a drastic way.

Druegar's original post was "how do we keep one CoA from bifurcating onto multiple simultaneous runs?" (Paraphrase) This "how do we limit TE sharing between strangers" feels out of the blue. The only hint was that cryptic use of the word "especially." But he has a problem he's trying to solve, and if we couldn't prevent it I want to help fix it. I'm sure we all do.

When I brought up ghosts, it was in the context of ghosting is suddenly more rewarding than introducing new players to the game (see Kirk.) it wasn't about making ghosting less attractive. If you do that, there will be other consequences. A lot of unsold tickets get soaked up every year by farmers of one sort or another. If you can't share TEs and you can't ghost, most of those won't sell. So, there's that.

I'm not angry. Whatever happens happens. I'm actually laughing about this, off and on, between trying to decide how many TEs to dump before it's too late. It's just so Aesop.

If Jeff didn't care about one person with a ton of pulls at the end of a run then why did he create TE Tokens that don't stack? Why not just let one person equip a Ring a Cloak a Charm, Horn, or all of them at once? If he let them all stack it would help water down power creep. Sure it would increase the number of overall pulls but all he would have to do is change the mix of the boxes to compensate.

Rob F wrote: If Jeff didn't care about one person with a ton of pulls at the end of a run then why did he create TE Tokens that don't stack? Why not just let one person equip a Ring a Cloak a Charm, Horn, or all of them at once? If he let them all stack it would help water down power creep. Sure it would increase the number of overall pulls but all he would have to do is change the mix of the boxes to compensate.

That's exactly how the CoA came about. It allows the other three to stack in one slot. Letting all four stack would have doubled the cap.

Jeff DOESN'T care how much treasure one person gets. It's all about the cap per ticket. It has nothing to do with cap per person, per se. The latter is something that's been tacked on this year in an "Occupy TD" sort of way.

At GenCon, say you get 18 loot for a $60 ticket. Minus other stuff - call it $3 per loot. Matt is selling them for 4.50-ish. If you're purely farming, you have to run 1000 times to recoup the cost of a $1500 CoA. (Quibble, fiddle, however you want. Here, cut it in half.)

Who is ever going to run 750 dungeons in their lifetime? So why are you surprised that people are trying to find a way to improve their ROI?

Changing the mix penalizes new players who only draw three to allow the top 10% keep their crack of ever rising loot caps.

We've been down this road many times in the last few years, and now we are circling back through old discussions

kurtreznor wrote: Ive seen multiple mentions of ghosting on this thread, and i would like to request that it not be outright banned. If it needs some limitation, i suggest either a treasure cap on ghosts (perhaps 10 max) or limit each player to only one ghost can get treasue.

I personally like the one ghost per person option because then we avoid the question/argument of what the cap should be and the difficulty of administering it. But i also realize the one ghost per person rule is perfect for me...so more input is welcome.

For me, there have been two scenarios i have ghosted a ticket:
1. 5 person run. Each person has two tickets so you can have a small party. The ghost treasue helps mitigate the $100+ price of doing this.
2. Our group has all 10 tickets but is missing a person (often due to cancellation). I would prefer to find someone for this ticket, but we need someone who agrees with our already selected difficulty and classes. If we dont find a person, we ghost the ticket to avoid a random walk-on that could ruin our plans.

Pardon me if i'm late digging through this but is ghosting part of the overall problem to be solved? A quick read just looks like the rehash of treasure enhancer arguments we go through every token design cycle.

I understand if greed tokens need to be carried through the dungeon, at this point go with epilogue room and understand that they need to shown and inspected regardless if individuals carry their own or a party boss shows the 10 set. Long as they're shown in epilogue why does it matter if 1 or 10 people carry urtes'?

If we do checks in epilogue then don't bother in coaching, it saves already busy staff a precious few seconds per player. Limiting access to epilogue room should be enough to limit token hand offs.

The last time they were routinely checked in the epilogue room, we had tremendous back up. There were at least two times that there the line of groups I was in was 4 teams deep. I would add that the reasoning for having each person carrying their TEs is to, indirectly, discourage loaning of TEs to strangers. I would wager there were a few complaints last year about people pushing their use on strangers. I seem to remember comments regarding that in the post convention threads.

I will add that checking them in epilogue only could result in people handing their TEs to the group behind them. The epilogue rooms would need to be staffed with more volunteers to eliminate that problem.

I think the point is to make sure that the TEs go through the dungeon, hence checking twice.

As many are suggesting, if we wanted to just check in an epilogue room, which was very secure, that would probably also do the trick. If you prevent anyone who wasn't just on the run from entering, then only tokens that were just on the run with those players will be there.

I don't think I'm missing anything there, or am i?

All that said, we have our marching orders.

I would suggest that if we want to discuss ghosting again, we do so in a separate thread, and see if Jeff comments or creates a specific rule for it.

Kirk Bauer wrote:
On the other hand, I absolutely don't like hearing about a veteran wheeling and dealing in the coaching room with newer players about loaning of treasure-enhancing tokens and the following treasure draws.

I can tell you that this exact experience turned 3 long time casual players into more active forum members and was absolutely responsible for my token purchase this year as well.

I realize it isn't perfect, and definitely will not be happening now, but I am truly glad it happened last year.

Incognito wrote:
I do think it makes a difference.

When things are distributed among lots of people, you have less overall variability. One person getting rid of their collection doesn't impact the market much. If everyone is concentrated in just a few hands, diminishing marginal utility means those people have lots of extras, as opposed to if those tokens were more evenly distributed (among all players).

One potential danger of situations where one person coordinates/pools their group's tokens is that the participation of that group may rest on that single individual. If that person quits (or dies!) the rest of the group may stop playing.

So there certainly are advantages to trying to diversify the base instead of having things get concentrated.

Eric you forget I asked what it matters to Jeff. Jeff has stated multiple times that he does not deal with the secondary market.

I cannot speak about what happens with anyone's group beyond mine. I also cannot predict the future. I agree if something happens to me my group will stop playing. This has NOTHING to do with tokens. I buy all our tickets.

So I stick with my argument that Jeff doesn't care. Also that my deal with my friends does not affect you or anyone else.