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

Raven wrote:

MasterED wrote: An unsold run as I have seen it is when no one has checked in for the run at the time the run moves to the coaching room. Hence it will be a loss for TD.

That makes sense. (In fact, that's how I did my first Solo Run, back in the day) but there's still the question of people manipulating this to their advantage. And whether you can use your TE's for another run within that 2h time frame.

I'm all for TD getting the max value from their runs, but it's effectively the same thing as selling one of the (hypothetical) Treasure Runs. I'm not saying that's bad - just that hanging around by the front desk waiting for a run to go unsold is like spending Time to invest in a personal Treasure Run.

Or perhaps other people see it differently than I do.

would a run ever go unsold at GC without someone manipulating it?
We returned 2 tickets 2 hours before our run, and they hot snatched up very quickly.

Maybe at the smaller cons.

Wade Schwendemann wrote: would a run ever go unsold at GC without someone manipulating it?
We returned 2 tickets 2 hours before our run, and they hot snatched up very quickly.

Maybe at the smaller cons.

At GenCon it's incredibly unlikely. I've seen it happen, though - like when 5 players didn't show up for one run, and they blended it with another run where 6 players didn't show. Or Sunday morning, first thing - a Saturday party can cause hangover-related returns/refunds. And few people are online early Sunday morning looking for tix.
GenCon SoCal had quite a few unsold runs, too, IIRC.

But mostly it's at the smaller Con, yeah.

Raven wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote: would a run ever go unsold at GC without someone manipulating it?
We returned 2 tickets 2 hours before our run, and they hot snatched up very quickly.

Maybe at the smaller cons.

At GenCon it's incredibly unlikely. I've seen it happen, though - like when 5 players didn't show up for one run, and they blended it with another run where 6 players didn't show. Or Sunday morning, first thing - a Saturday party can cause hangover-related returns/refunds. And few people are online early Sunday morning looking for tix
GenCon SoCal had quite a few unsold runs, too, IIRC.

But mostly it's at the smaller Con, yeah.

There were several runs with only a few players on Friday at WYC this year. Many of those runs were combined to create decent sized parties. That led to very long gaps in the Training room for me.

Brad Mortensen wrote: If people are playing because they're having fun with their friends, then loot is a secondary concern. They'd still do it even I've their monetary rewards were less than the cost of the ticket. No one wants to curb that. It's part of what makes the TD community so cool.

If the average value of loot exceeds the cost of the ticket, you'll encourage behavior you don't want.

There's an easy, low-risk way to know if there's a problem or not: sell the bubbles.

Sell a single ticket for $560, with the event time during the bubbles. Whoever buys the ticket doesn't get to go past the coaching room.

The coach just looks at the person's TEs and scrawls "170 chips" or whatever across the party card, and hands it back with a fist full of wristbands and ten 10-packs.

The person marches straight to the XP desk and hands out treasure chips and completion tokens. No XP card, though. That's stupid.

It can be the canary-in-the-coal-mine. If nobody buys them, then we know there's no farming problem. If they sell out, then we made a few dozen more tickets available for newbies, TD gets a few more bucks, and maybe we start thinking about loot caps.

That seems like a slippery slope. And I don't understand why "ghost" slots should get completion/participation tokens in the first place. There is nobody there participating or completing.

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: If people are playing because they're having fun with their friends, then loot is a secondary concern. They'd still do it even I've their monetary rewards were less than the cost of the ticket. No one wants to curb that. It's part of what makes the TD community so cool.

If the average value of loot exceeds the cost of the ticket, you'll encourage behavior you don't want.

There's an easy, low-risk way to know if there's a problem or not: sell the bubbles.

Sell a single ticket for $560, with the event time during the bubbles. Whoever buys the ticket doesn't get to go past the coaching room.

The coach just looks at the person's TEs and scrawls "170 chips" or whatever across the party card, and hands it back with a fist full of wristbands and ten 10-packs.

The person marches straight to the XP desk and hands out treasure chips and completion tokens. No XP card, though. That's stupid.

It can be the canary-in-the-coal-mine. If nobody buys them, then we know there's no farming problem. If they sell out, then we made a few dozen more tickets available for newbies, TD gets a few more bucks, and maybe we start thinking about loot caps.

That seems like a slippery slope. And I don't understand why "ghost" slots should get completion/participation tokens in the first place. There is nobody there participating or completing.

So what? There's no one there wearing a CoA either.

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: If people are playing because they're having fun with their friends, then loot is a secondary concern. They'd still do it even I've their monetary rewards were less than the cost of the ticket. No one wants to curb that. It's part of what makes the TD community so cool.

If the average value of loot exceeds the cost of the ticket, you'll encourage behavior you don't want.

There's an easy, low-risk way to know if there's a problem or not: sell the bubbles.

Sell a single ticket for $560, with the event time during the bubbles. Whoever buys the ticket doesn't get to go past the coaching room.

The coach just looks at the person's TEs and scrawls "170 chips" or whatever across the party card, and hands it back with a fist full of wristbands and ten 10-packs.

The person marches straight to the XP desk and hands out treasure chips and completion tokens. No XP card, though. That's stupid.

It can be the canary-in-the-coal-mine. If nobody buys them, then we know there's no farming problem. If they sell out, then we made a few dozen more tickets available for newbies, TD gets a few more bucks, and maybe we start thinking about loot caps.

That seems like a slippery slope. And I don't understand why "ghost" slots should get completion/participation tokens in the first place. There is nobody there participating or completing.

So what? There's no one there wearing a CoA either.

Very true. I'm totally OK with Ghost Slots getting no completion tokens or treasure chips at all, and just getting 8 Token Bags to compensate for the ticket price (which I hear was the original plan for this year). That would be my preferred solution, and would completely solve any problem with token farming from ghost runs.

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Raven wrote:

MasterED wrote: An unsold run as I have seen it is when no one has checked in for the run at the time the run moves to the coaching room. Hence it will be a loss for TD.

That makes sense. (In fact, that's how I did my first Solo Run, back in the day) but there's still the question of people manipulating this to their advantage. And whether you can use your TE's for another run within that 2h time frame.

I'm all for TD getting the max value from their runs, but it's effectively the same thing as selling one of the (hypothetical) Treasure Runs. I'm not saying that's bad - just that hanging around by the front desk waiting for a run to go unsold is like spending Time to invest in a personal Treasure Run.

Or perhaps other people see it differently than I do.

would a run ever go unsold at GC without someone manipulating it?
We returned 2 tickets 2 hours before our run, and they hot snatched up very quickly.

Maybe at the smaller cons.

It happens more often than you think.

This year for Grind there was a run that was fully sold out (via the online GenCon system) yet no one showed up at all.

Once a few years ago, a full Grind slot was sold, but a member of that group had to get to the emergency room and the ticket holder (with all the tickets) went with the person to the hospital. So the rest of the group didn't have the physical tickets and didn't bother to show up at all (another wasted full slot).

If people return tickets to the GenCon system at the last minute, it may be hard to sell them.

Another time this year, there was an entire unused Grind slot. Apparently 7 tickets were returned, and the other 3 were bought by newbies who thought they were doing the main dungeon and eventually got a refund through the GenCon booth.

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: If people are playing because they're having fun with their friends, then loot is a secondary concern. They'd still do it even I've their monetary rewards were less than the cost of the ticket. No one wants to curb that. It's part of what makes the TD community so cool.

If the average value of loot exceeds the cost of the ticket, you'll encourage behavior you don't want.

There's an easy, low-risk way to know if there's a problem or not: sell the bubbles.

Sell a single ticket for $560, with the event time during the bubbles. Whoever buys the ticket doesn't get to go past the coaching room.

The coach just looks at the person's TEs and scrawls "170 chips" or whatever across the party card, and hands it back with a fist full of wristbands and ten 10-packs.

The person marches straight to the XP desk and hands out treasure chips and completion tokens. No XP card, though. That's stupid.

It can be the canary-in-the-coal-mine. If nobody buys them, then we know there's no farming problem. If they sell out, then we made a few dozen more tickets available for newbies, TD gets a few more bucks, and maybe we start thinking about loot caps.

That seems like a slippery slope. And I don't understand why "ghost" slots should get completion/participation tokens in the first place. There is nobody there participating or completing.

So what? There's no one there wearing a CoA either.

Very true. I'm totally OK with Ghost Slots getting no completion tokens or treasure chips at all, and just getting 8 Token Bags to compensate for the ticket price (which I hear was the original plan for this year). That would be my preferred solution, and would completely solve any problem with token farming from ghost runs.

It was either 8 Token Bags per ticket OR treasure tokens (not sure on the completion).

From my personal spending habits it would not impact my GC TD tickets but it would impact WYC/GHC. I have bought extra tickets at those cons with the thought of getting players to fill the spots. If you the current policy is changed then I won't take the chance of not filling the spots and just not buy the tickets in the first place.

Ed

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: If people are playing because they're having fun with their friends, then loot is a secondary concern. They'd still do it even I've their monetary rewards were less than the cost of the ticket. No one wants to curb that. It's part of what makes the TD community so cool.

If the average value of loot exceeds the cost of the ticket, you'll encourage behavior you don't want.

There's an easy, low-risk way to know if there's a problem or not: sell the bubbles.

Sell a single ticket for $560, with the event time during the bubbles. Whoever buys the ticket doesn't get to go past the coaching room.

The coach just looks at the person's TEs and scrawls "170 chips" or whatever across the party card, and hands it back with a fist full of wristbands and ten 10-packs.

The person marches straight to the XP desk and hands out treasure chips and completion tokens. No XP card, though. That's stupid.

It can be the canary-in-the-coal-mine. If nobody buys them, then we know there's no farming problem. If they sell out, then we made a few dozen more tickets available for newbies, TD gets a few more bucks, and maybe we start thinking about loot caps.

That seems like a slippery slope. And I don't understand why "ghost" slots should get completion/participation tokens in the first place. There is nobody there participating or completing.

So what? There's no one there wearing a CoA either.

Very true. I'm totally OK with Ghost Slots getting no completion tokens or treasure chips at all, and just getting 8 Token Bags to compensate for the ticket price (which I hear was the original plan for this year). That would be my preferred solution, and would completely solve any problem with token farming from ghost runs.

I would likely return my no shows tickets without the completion token. I admit I want 10 for the group. If someone no shows, I would rather a get the credits, but that might just be me. I work hard to fill my runs at GC. At WYC and GHC I am not certain if I will have full runs. But tickets aren't yet an issue at those events, yet.

MasterED wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: If people are playing because they're having fun with their friends, then loot is a secondary concern. They'd still do it even I've their monetary rewards were less than the cost of the ticket. No one wants to curb that. It's part of what makes the TD community so cool.

If the average value of loot exceeds the cost of the ticket, you'll encourage behavior you don't want.

There's an easy, low-risk way to know if there's a problem or not: sell the bubbles.

Sell a single ticket for $560, with the event time during the bubbles. Whoever buys the ticket doesn't get to go past the coaching room.

The coach just looks at the person's TEs and scrawls "170 chips" or whatever across the party card, and hands it back with a fist full of wristbands and ten 10-packs.

The person marches straight to the XP desk and hands out treasure chips and completion tokens. No XP card, though. That's stupid.

It can be the canary-in-the-coal-mine. If nobody buys them, then we know there's no farming problem. If they sell out, then we made a few dozen more tickets available for newbies, TD gets a few more bucks, and maybe we start thinking about loot caps.

That seems like a slippery slope. And I don't understand why "ghost" slots should get completion/participation tokens in the first place. There is nobody there participating or completing.

So what? There's no one there wearing a CoA either.

Very true. I'm totally OK with Ghost Slots getting no completion tokens or treasure chips at all, and just getting 8 Token Bags to compensate for the ticket price (which I hear was the original plan for this year). That would be my preferred solution, and would completely solve any problem with token farming from ghost runs.

It was either 8 Token Bags per ticket OR treasure tokens (not sure on the completion).

From my personal spending habits it would not impact my GC TD tickets but it would impact WYC/GHC. I have bought extra tickets at those cons with the thought of getting players to fill the spots. If you the current policy is changed then I won't take the chance of not filling the spots and just not buy the tickets in the first place.

Ed

I would probably adopt the same decision making process

Incognito wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Raven wrote:

MasterED wrote: An unsold run as I have seen it is when no one has checked in for the run at the time the run moves to the coaching room. Hence it will be a loss for TD.

That makes sense. (In fact, that's how I did my first Solo Run, back in the day) but there's still the question of people manipulating this to their advantage. And whether you can use your TE's for another run within that 2h time frame.

I'm all for TD getting the max value from their runs, but it's effectively the same thing as selling one of the (hypothetical) Treasure Runs. I'm not saying that's bad - just that hanging around by the front desk waiting for a run to go unsold is like spending Time to invest in a personal Treasure Run.

Or perhaps other people see it differently than I do.

would a run ever go unsold at GC without someone manipulating it?
We returned 2 tickets 2 hours before our run, and they hot snatched up very quickly.

Maybe at the smaller cons.

It happens more often than you think.

This year for Grind there was a run that was fully sold out (via the online GenCon system) yet no one showed up at all.

Once a few years ago, a full Grind slot was sold, but a member of that group had to get to the emergency room and the ticket holder (with all the tickets) went with the person to the hospital. So the rest of the group didn't have the physical tickets and didn't bother to show up at all (another wasted full slot).

If people return tickets to the GenCon system at the last minute, it may be hard to sell them.

Another time this year, there was an entire unused Grind slot. Apparently 7 tickets were returned, and the other 3 were bought by newbies who thought they were doing the main dungeon and eventually got a refund through the GenCon booth.

You are right, that is more than I would have thought.

I wish I had hung around more, I loved grind the one time I played it before.

Mike Steele wrote: I'm totally OK with Ghost Slots getting no completion tokens or treasure chips at all, and just getting 8 Token Bags to compensate for the ticket price (which I hear was the original plan for this year). That would be my preferred solution, and would completely solve any problem with token farming from ghost runs.

I disagree. it wouldn't solve problems with token farming from "ghost" runs.
It would reduce the amount of Treasure farming, but you still get tokens. In fact, you'd get approximately $56 of tokens (or actually $63.92, which is more than the price of a TD ticket!)

That makes it really tempting to buy out extra slots on any run I'm on, and then turn in that extra ticket for 8 packs of treasure. I get the 10 packs at a discount price, and I don't have to run with a full party of 10? Awesome! I've always felt that 7 players was the sweet spot, anyways. Later, I can sell those 10-packs - maybe for $7.50 each - and make a profit, while undercutting TD's sales.

The problem will still exist: I'm profiting from making fewer tickets available for others.

One other problem with your preferred solution, is that If you can't equip tokens on the non-existent players, then it's impossible to get Max Loot, because you won't have 10 CoGFs/CoAs equipped. That'll make a lot of players upset. Especially if it was unintentional that one ticket went unused.