TOPIC: "Ghosting" a run for Treasure - Changed at GenCon?

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: May I say something impolite? The root problem isn't farming. That's a symptom. The problem is that the value of the loot is close to or exceeding the cost of the ticket.

ESPECIALLY at the satellite cons where tickets are only $40.

And everyone is proposing "solutions " that wiil keep that true for their situation while stopping others, those "bad people"

I'm very much in Brad's corner here.

This is a complex problem with a (relatively) simple root. But because there's so many factors at play, people are championing solutions which may solve their perceived threats, without impacting their personal play-style. I know I'm guilty of this as well :/

If the root problem is value, then the solution seems simple. Let all the loot out you want, it will eventually be worth less than the value of a run.

Then the mix will have to change, or less people will buy tokens since they can just get them from loot though.

Or runs will have to increase in price.

I do think people are trying to solve different problems here.

I agree with that last comment, Wade.
I shudder at the proposed solution tho, because waiting for the market to sort itself out will probably mean (as you pointed out) fewer slots available, increased ticket cost, and lower value for thousands of players who are not trying to game the system. That can't be good for TD's longevity!

Raven wrote: Did anyone notice there was a change to the 'Ghosting' policy this past GenCon?
...

I'd like to congratulate Raven for inventing a perpetual motion machine

Matthew Hayward wrote: I'd like to congratulate Raven for inventing a perpetual motion machine

Hey, I'm just sitting here in awe of the fact that we've gotten over 10 pages of posts without going off topic !

(Hope I haven't jinxed it!)

jedibcg wrote: Okay so neither of you think it will work, but would you be fine with it, if I found people to be able to do this? Because this is truly farming. You don't need people that are going to Gen Con to game. Either everyone involved is there to make money as a farmer or they are there as mules. Yes you buy badges for mules and pay them, which cuts into your profits but it might be better than splitting your profits other farmers.

I don't know if the value of tokens decrease or actually increase because someone (or a group of someone's) gets 1 out of every 5 runs and has 1/5 the treasure pulls market.

If you honestly think you could ever successfully buy out 20% of all available True Dungeon tickets (full runs at that) then maybe you need to rethink the situation.

Raven wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: I'd like to congratulate Raven for inventing a perpetual motion machine

Hey, I'm just sitting here in awe of the fact that we've gotten over 10 pages of posts without going off topic !

(Hope I haven't jinxed it!)

Well now we are off topic...lol

Raven wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: May I say something impolite? The root problem isn't farming. That's a symptom. The problem is that the value of the loot is close to or exceeding the cost of the ticket.

ESPECIALLY at the satellite cons where tickets are only $40.

And everyone is proposing "solutions " that wiil keep that true for their situation while stopping others, those "bad people"

I'm very much in Brad's corner here.

This is a complex problem with a (relatively) simple root. But because there's so many factors at play, people are championing solutions which may solve their perceived threats, without impacting their personal play-style. I know I'm guilty of this as well :/

If the root problem is value, then the solution seems simple. Let all the loot out you want, it will eventually be worth less than the value of a run.

Then the mix will have to change, or less people will buy tokens since they can just get them from loot though.

Or runs will have to increase in price.

I do think people are trying to solve different problems here.

I agree with that last comment, Wade.
I shudder at the proposed solution tho, because waiting for the market to sort itself out will probably mean (as you pointed out) fewer slots available, increased ticket cost, and lower value for thousands of players who are not trying to game the system. That can't be good for TD's longevity!

I think you are right, just waiting for the market to sort itself out could take years with a lot of people feeling negatively about the game in the interim.

I am glad we are trying to find a solution to the problems, and I also think that right now, some change is definitely neceasary.

We should work on coming up with a solution that is fairest for all that:

Allows for people not to be hit too hard by late no shows

Allows for the occasional different run (solo, double down) while not making them completely cost prohibitive

Ensures that the maximum number of people who want to experience TD have that opportunity. This would most likely require we limit the value of the retainer.

What about a sliding scale, if you have 1 retainer, their max treasure pulls is X.if you have 2 retainers, their max treasure draws is 2X-Y, etc?
Or just make it simple and say you can only get X treasure pulls from all your retainers, regardless of how many you have?

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

jedibcg wrote: Okay so neither of you think it will work, but would you be fine with it, if I found people to be able to do this? Because this is truly farming. You don't need people that are going to Gen Con to game. Either everyone involved is there to make money as a farmer or they are there as mules. Yes you buy badges for mules and pay them, which cuts into your profits but it might be better than splitting your profits other farmers.

I don't know if the value of tokens decrease or actually increase because someone (or a group of someone's) gets 1 out of every 5 runs and has 1/5 the treasure pulls market.

If you honestly think you could ever successfully buy out 20% of all available True Dungeon tickets (full runs at that) then maybe you need to rethink the situation.

I know before this year I have been able to 7 to 10 full runs in my cart without trying to get that many. Again if I wanted to farm I would have all 10 of my badges logging to get tickets. I would need to use mulitple of them anyway. So 20% is probably not do able but 10% seems very possible, each acount would just need to get 8 runs.

jedibcg wrote: I know before this year I have been able to 7 to 10 full runs in my cart without trying to get that many. Again if I wanted to farm I would have all 10 of my badges logging to get tickets. I would need to use mulitple of them anyway. So 20% is probably not do able but 10% seems very possible, each acount would just need to get 8 runs.

This matches my experience,

I'm less worried about GenCon, tho, than smaller cons like WYC or GameHole.

I could have put almost 200 GameHole tix into my cart at one point. And for cheaper than farming GenCon runs.

If the treasure mix at GHC matches the mix at GenCon then I'd be worried, but we don't know that it will. Obviously the treasure mix at WYC2016 wasn't nearly as good as GenCon's.

I think that this years mix of treasure was a bit too rich. I was very surprised to hear of so many relics and legendaries being pulled.

Dial that back and the dynamic changes.

Raven wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: May I say something impolite? The root problem isn't farming. That's a symptom. The problem is that the value of the loot is close to or exceeding the cost of the ticket.

ESPECIALLY at the satellite cons where tickets are only $40.

And everyone is proposing "solutions " that wiil keep that true for their situation while stopping others, those "bad people"

I'm very much in Brad's corner here.

This is a complex problem with a (relatively) simple root. But because there's so many factors at play, people are championing solutions which may solve their perceived threats, without impacting their personal play-style. I know I'm guilty of this as well :/

If the root problem is value, then the solution seems simple. Let all the loot out you want, it will eventually be worth less than the value of a run.

Then the mix will have to change, or less people will buy tokens since they can just get them from loot though.

Or runs will have to increase in price.

I do think people are trying to solve different problems here.

I agree with that last comment, Wade.
I shudder at the proposed solution tho, because waiting for the market to sort itself out will probably mean (as you pointed out) fewer slots available, increased ticket cost, and lower value for thousands of players who are not trying to game the system. That can't be good for TD's longevity!

The thing is, it's doable TODAY. It's profitable TODAY.

Is it happening?
Is it happening enough to cut into the amount of treasure in players hands?
Is it happening enough to block players from playing True Dungeon?


Generally speaking the number of players who have the tokens required to farm a full run is small, probably 2% of the TD populus. The majority of them are on the boards here.

I think we all (those of us with the tokens to ghost runs for a profit) all know we could do this and profit from it, but it also has a scaling chance of negatively affecting True Dungeon as a whole.

For my part, living out of state and traveling to GenCon there is not enough profit from a TD run to offset the cost of attending GenCon without investing a MASSIVE amount of money and potentially causing a MASSIVE negative ripple for the game. Which could potentially impact the value of my tokens. It's disadvantageous for me to try and profit off my True Dungeon tokens in this way.

Living in town it would be signifigantly easier to profit, the margins would be smaller to do so, the numbers necessary to do so would also be smaller with a smaller potential impact on the game.


I wonder, what's the potential profit off a run against the initial $10,000 investment (minimum) for 10 CoA that can only be used 3 weekends a year. How many runs of TD do you have to buy out in order to JUST make back the investment cost before you turn a profit? If you're doing it to profit you'd have to consider the CoA tokens a business expense...


Is there a POTENTIAL for exploitation? Yea, totally.
Have people exploited this? Likely yes, to a small degree
Is it an active problem today?

To answer that question I think we have to ask two others.

Is the standard player (not forumite, Joe Random Player) able to get a ticket into True Dungeon with effort expended. - It seems that the answer TODAY is yes. There were some changes in wait listing this year which negatively affected that but that's a GenCon ticketing issue, not a treasure farming issue.

Is the amount of farming currently going on negatively affecting the value of treasure? - Seems like the best way to validate that one is simple; currently the value of treasure from a run with CoA is greater than the ticket cost of the event. Based on that I'd say it's not currently affecting the value to a negative level.


Based on those two factors I would say this is not an active problem TODAY.


There's a ton of potential for exploitation and that potential rises with each successive treasure token but it doesn't seem that it's at a point of causing issues right now.

Now that doesn't mean we shouldn't have some logical limitations in place.

If you want to ghost a run that you paid for, sure. But you need to physically have the tokens you are ghosting with you. That means CoA RoR CoGF Synergy etc.

Validation of treasure tokens at coaching and treasure - seems easy enough if you've got 10 CoA. Slightly more complex if you've got RoR HoP/AoTF CoGF and Ioun Stones but still easy enough if you're holding them all together. (I hold a single treasure token storage tube that contains the groups URTE. Might go to 2 tubes with the Ioun Stones this year.)



There's definitely potential for exploitation out there but the investment is large and honestly I think that's going to be one of the major factors in keeping it in check. No one wants to see the token market implode on itself, the potential loss of value among the 2% of players with the ability to exploit treasure is fairly immense.


That said I think it's a good thing that we keep watching this, keep checking the numbers and calling out when it looks like the sky is falling. It's up to the group to make sure we don't dig too deep into the hoard and collapse the cave on top of us all.

True Dungeon is a game played at a game convention. The only sane goal is for the maximum number of people to have fun. Anything that reduces this should be discouraged. Anyone that buys a TD ticket and turns it in should have the opportunity to get treasure and run rewards.

Here are the changes I would make given everything I read in this thread:

1. Fill all groups to 10 players if anyone wants to play (wait list, etc.)
2. Allow ghosting/retainer if no player wants the slot
3. Allow the purchasing of unsold slots/runs including rewards except xp.
4. Sell 20 treasure tokens for 60$ to anyone that wants to buy