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

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

Harlax wrote:

Cavor wrote:

Matt wrote: Honest curiosity, are you primarily a boardgamer, ccg (magic/yu-gi and the like), or a non collectible player? Trying to really figure your thought process out.

I'm mostly a D&D player, your post enlightened me a bit. I treat the game as D&D and most of you think token collecting is like Magic the Gathering. I understand the token price fervor better now.

Yes, TD is expensive and everyone should have the right to play in a manner that provides the most enjoyment.

D&D brought me here. The crafting/transmuting aspect owes more to Computer RPGs.

There is a token collecting aspect, but thats a small subset of players. I have little interest in collecting tokens outside of what makes for a stronger build.

Some people will do sealed pack runs where the group only uses the tokens they pull from their 10 packs. There are lots of ways to play.

I've run a few interesting ones like that.

We ran Green with Envy 2 years ago and it was a lot of fun.
We talked about Bloody Epic which didn't happen (and won't due to scaling)

They were great fun.

They would have been a very bad place to have a random waitlist fill in.

As an aside, can you explain what those 2 are?
Sorry for being uninformed

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

Harlax wrote:

Cavor wrote:

Matt wrote: Honest curiosity, are you primarily a boardgamer, ccg (magic/yu-gi and the like), or a non collectible player? Trying to really figure your thought process out.

I'm mostly a D&D player, your post enlightened me a bit. I treat the game as D&D and most of you think token collecting is like Magic the Gathering. I understand the token price fervor better now.

Yes, TD is expensive and everyone should have the right to play in a manner that provides the most enjoyment.

D&D brought me here. The crafting/transmuting aspect owes more to Computer RPGs.

There is a token collecting aspect, but thats a small subset of players. I have little interest in collecting tokens outside of what makes for a stronger build.

Some people will do sealed pack runs where the group only uses the tokens they pull from their 10 packs. There are lots of ways to play.

I've run a few interesting ones like that.

We ran Green with Envy 2 years ago and it was a lot of fun.
We talked about Bloody Epic which didn't happen (and won't due to scaling)

They were great fun.

They would have been a very bad place to have a random waitlist fill in.

As an aside, can you explain what those 2 are?
Sorry for being uninformed

Only uncommons, commons and treasure enhancers allowed, and only R/UC/C and TE I believe.

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Arcanist Kolixela wrote:

Harlax wrote:

Cavor wrote:

Matt wrote: Honest curiosity, are you primarily a boardgamer, ccg (magic/yu-gi and the like), or a non collectible player? Trying to really figure your thought process out.

I'm mostly a D&D player, your post enlightened me a bit. I treat the game as D&D and most of you think token collecting is like Magic the Gathering. I understand the token price fervor better now.

Yes, TD is expensive and everyone should have the right to play in a manner that provides the most enjoyment.

D&D brought me here. The crafting/transmuting aspect owes more to Computer RPGs.

There is a token collecting aspect, but thats a small subset of players. I have little interest in collecting tokens outside of what makes for a stronger build.

Some people will do sealed pack runs where the group only uses the tokens they pull from their 10 packs. There are lots of ways to play.

I've run a few interesting ones like that.

We ran Green with Envy 2 years ago and it was a lot of fun.
We talked about Bloody Epic which didn't happen (and won't due to scaling)

They were great fun.

They would have been a very bad place to have a random waitlist fill in.

As an aside, can you explain what those 2 are?
Sorry for being uninformed

Green with Envy. Nightmare run. Only uncommon and treasure enhancers allowed. This followed a successful Greedy sealed pack plus one Nightmare run. That one was played with only the tokens we drew from the starter packs plus any one token of our choice and treasure enhancers.

On the green with envy run 2 years ago which i had the pain/pleasure of being on. We planned nightmare and once in coaching room we selected hardcore once the dm/coaching laughing died down prior to our entry through the dungeon. Uncommons and lower aside from greed, pre planned ahead of time what builds and classes we all were playing.

Awesome run and one that would've been a pain if we had to explain to a random what we were upto. It took a while through forums to find our bodies and tweak builds as we surprised ourselves what could be min/maxed at green lvl.

We all made it room 7 and while we didn't win, some of us didn't die....

Matt wrote: On the green with envy run 2 years ago which i had the pain/pleasure of being on. We planned nightmare and once in coaching room we selected hardcore once the dm/coaching laughing died down prior to our entry through the dungeon. Uncommons and lower aside from greed, pre planned ahead of time what builds and classes we all were playing.

Awesome run and one that would've been a pain if we had to explain to a random what we were upto. It took a while through forums to find our bodies and tweak builds as we surprised ourselves what could be min/maxed at green lvl.

We all made it room 7 and while we didn't win, some of us didn't die....

This sounds like a LOT of fun.

Matt wrote: On the green with envy run 2 years ago which i had the pain/pleasure of being on. We planned nightmare and once in coaching room we selected hardcore once the dm/coaching laughing died down prior to our entry through the dungeon. Uncommons and lower aside from greed, pre planned ahead of time what builds and classes we all were playing.

Awesome run and one that would've been a pain if we had to explain to a random what we were upto. It took a while through forums to find our bodies and tweak builds as we surprised ourselves what could be min/maxed at green lvl.

We all made it room 7 and while we didn't win, some of us didn't die....

The greedy sealed plus one run was done at WYC. The difficulty of nightmare was boosted considerably after that.

I like to think we are to blame for that...

Cavor wrote:

Picc wrote: I dont personally care what treasure other people are getting, I do care if it looks like we are trending towards an unstable token economy since TD depends on the stability of that economy to keep going.

That's another thing I don't get, what is a "Stable Token Economy"? If by this you mean preserving the resale value of tokens on ebay, why do we care? In the long run all of everyone's tokens will be worth exactly zero.

TD should not set policy to protect someone who is buying large amounts of tokens in the hope of making a profit. They should do whatever they can to encourage and reward people that support TD through token purchases.

Regardless of who is buying or who is protected it is in TDs interest to protect the idea of stable token values. Who is going to spend a hundreds let alone a thousand dollars on a game chits if that they think that they can get the same effect for free tomorrow?

IMO its not about protecting anyone, its about making sure everyone still thinks buying is a good idea tomorrow.

Cavor wrote:

There seems to be 4 reasons you guys are listing for wanting ghosts / retainers:

1. We don't want to run with strangers because it might lower our enjoyment.

That flows bloth ways, as I suspect you know
new.truedungeon.com/index.php/forum?view=topic&catid=580&id=228924&limitstart=0

Cavor wrote: 2. We only want to play with X number of players

Whats wrong with that?
If someone wants to pay extra to buy out a slot for a private game why should they be forced to open that game up to the public?
Are tickets really so scarce because I put in a few calls to the waitlist this year while coaching and they just didn't have anyone waiting...

Cavor wrote:
3. We have physical / psychological constraints
4. Gamers are generally weird and stink

#3 is totally understandable, it’s 1&2 that I don’t quite get because it seems exclusionary. Everyone who responded said they have had both good and bad pugs. By being exclusionary you are throwing away the good experiences as well. My only advice is focus on the good ones, don’t let someone else’s behavior spoil your fun in anything you do, even if they mess something up.

Why should anyone have to take the risk?
If they choose to thats great, but vets as a group have more or less been told they are the weird gamers who stink. They are to powerful, they hog classes, they ruin puzzles, and generally ruin other people fun by taking the game to seriously etc. So naturally those vets pull back and try to run their own games, only now thats a problem too.

Honestly I don't mean this to sound like a personal attack but it sounds like there isnt anything vets can do to make you happy other then to self flagellate and quit the game. I mean heck, some people were even so scared they were doing harm last year that they started hosting newbie runs. Sure TD needs new blood, but it also needs to focus on retention of proven users.


Anyway Ghosting for treasure is bad, but I suspect the pool of people with the resources to do so is small enough that we can police them as a community. If we figure out someone is doing it, we tell Jeff, and he asks them to stop. If they continue I suspect they would have a hard time liquidating their profits, assuming they didn't just get personally banned from the event.

I agree with much of what Picc says (unusual I know), but there is one thing I would say.

Tickets were scarce this year. Just because no one was on the waitlist doesn't mean tickets weren't. The fact that they sold out faster than ever proves that. Someone may have wanted a TD ticket couldn't get it and then scheduled something else in its place.

That said I think (and I could be wrong) that most of the people that missed out on tickets initially were able to find spots once they came to the forums. I don't know if the demand for tickets went way up or there are more of buying out full slots and then sorting out who is playing on them. Probably a bit of both. Which does make tickets scarcer.

jedibcg wrote: I agree with much of what Picc says (unusual I know), but there is one thing I would say.

Tickets were scarce this year. Just because no one was on the waitlist doesn't mean tickets weren't. The fact that they sold out faster than ever proves that. Someone may have wanted a TD ticket couldn't get it and then scheduled something else in its place.

That said I think (and I could be wrong) that most of the people that missed out on tickets initially were able to find spots once they came to the forums. I don't know if the demand for tickets went way up or there are more of buying out full slots and then sorting out who is playing on them. Probably a bit of both. Which does make tickets scarcer.

What i ended up doing honestly, i have an unstable group year to year. I try to if at all possible buy a run or 2 then if needed backfill from forums/posting tickets avail. I got 2 newbies in one run, i posted opening with classes taken and arranged a fb chat ahead of time so the group talked to each other/communicated.

I've also pickup most of my side runs via forum ahead of con.

For anyone that volunteers/works the con (either for TD or any other aspect at con) scheduling can be a nightmare for us.

jedibcg wrote: I agree with much of what Picc says (unusual I know), but there is one thing I would say.

Tickets were scarce this year. Just because no one was on the waitlist doesn't mean tickets weren't. The fact that they sold out faster than ever proves that. Someone may have wanted a TD ticket couldn't get it and then scheduled something else in its place.

That said I think (and I could be wrong) that most of the people that missed out on tickets initially were able to find spots once they came to the forums. I don't know if the demand for tickets went way up or there are more of buying out full slots and then sorting out who is playing on them. Probably a bit of both. Which does make tickets scarcer.

I'd guess that the vast majority of people that wanted tickets and didn't get them have never been on the forums.

Regarding policing ghost tickets as a community, the first step in that is a clearly stated policy from True Dungeon. Which I hope happens.

Mike Steele wrote:

jedibcg wrote: I agree with much of what Picc says (unusual I know), but there is one thing I would say.

Tickets were scarce this year. Just because no one was on the waitlist doesn't mean tickets weren't. The fact that they sold out faster than ever proves that. Someone may have wanted a TD ticket couldn't get it and then scheduled something else in its place.

That said I think (and I could be wrong) that most of the people that missed out on tickets initially were able to find spots once they came to the forums. I don't know if the demand for tickets went way up or there are more of buying out full slots and then sorting out who is playing on them. Probably a bit of both. Which does make tickets scarcer.

I'd guess that the vast majority of people that wanted tickets and didn't get them have never been on the forums.

That is probably true, but it makes it difficult for us to work on since we don't really know about it.

Mike Steele wrote: Regarding policing ghost tickets as a community, the first step in that is a clearly stated policy from True Dungeon. Which I hope happens.

Yes. This is what I'm hoping to see:

A clearly stated policy, which is communicated (a) to Registration desk staff in printed form so they have a piece of paper to refer to if uncertain, (b) to Treasure Desk staff, so they have the same understanding & expectations, (c) to the Players - preferably by posting it in rulebooks & on the forum - so everyone knows what to expect going in.

I think it would also be very helpful if True Dungeon would consider its stance on ideas like selling "Treasure Runs" and/or letting players buy out "empty runs / empty slots" to use solely for the treasure. I'm not sure I'm entirely in favour of the idea, but if it's already happening (buying out an empty slot of 10 tix on the premise that, "TD shouldn't lose money on the tickets" and then not running the slot but immediately flipping it for the Treasure Coins = effectively a DIY Treasure Run) I'd like people to know that it's an option.