TOPIC: Missed GenCon, Game Hole Con exp for 2016?

Picc wrote: Eric, I know your playing devils advocate, and maybe we do need an epic difficulty in the main dungeon (subject for another thread). But the vast majority of what your proposing would be a pr nightmare.

like Halrax said its going to be impossible to police level requirments. Its not like dedicated nightmare runs were very effective at filtering.

The reason those restrictions didn't work was because TD wasn't willing to hold firm on the policy.

But still, having a policy is often useful. Take for example, the minimum age limit rule. That exists but also is not strictfully enforced. Do you think they should police the age requirement? Or should they abolish it?

Is having an age requirement and possibly needing to ask small children to leave a potential "pr nightmare"?

Try and remember as much as we on the forums wish TD was more game like, we run a lot more then most.

Unfortunately, TD has become more and more like a Haunted House door.

Guaranteed 3 treasure stamps. Tokens not really being necessary (especially since you get 99% of the benefits at just Hardcore level where you can survive "with a pickup group and a starter pack of tokens").

The typical group frankly needs to be pandered to. They're paying a lot of money to pretend to be heros once a year. It doesnt take much to spoil that experence for them and they dont see the same cracks in the logic we do after several runs per year.

And they are already being pandered to - quite heavily in fact, such as the most recent rule change to treasure. I think they are pandered to way too much.

So do you think we should pander to the typical group in terms of XP (possibly at the expense of upper level players)?

Well, once again having a system that grants XP only to players of sufficiently low level will pander specifically to them.

If they get to the point where they want a challange its there for them. If we encourage them to run into it by dangling rewards or telling them they are not cool enough for higher difficulties human nature will kick in and theyre going to have a bad time.

::rolls eyes::

Human and their pathetic "human natures"....

Incognito wrote:

jedibcg wrote:

Incognito wrote: Alternatively, create some sort of incentive for all the party members to survive (extra treasure? extra XP?). That way people have a vested interest in keeping the whole party alive!

If there is for all party memebers that survive how is that going to create a vested interest in keeping the whole party alive?

I said "create some sort of incentive for all the party members to survive" NOT "create some sort of incentive for all the party members that survive".

So the incentive would either only apply when everyone survives, or it scales based on the number of people surviving.

I am personally against more treasure enhancers, but hypothetically, what if there was:

Charm of Good Teamwork
Extra Treasure Chips per number of surviving players:
1-5: 2 Chips
6-9: 3 Chips
10: 4 Chips

Suppose there was a party of 2 experienced players with the CoGT and 8 newbies. The experienced players have a strong and vested interest in keeping the whole party alive (whereas right now, sometimes they are just focused on keeping themselves alive).

Time to stock up on a lot of Fallen Star Mushrooms, if that is the case.

Incognito wrote:

jedibcg wrote:

Incognito wrote: Alternatively, create some sort of incentive for all the party members to survive (extra treasure? extra XP?). That way people have a vested interest in keeping the whole party alive!

If there is for all party memebers that survive how is that going to create a vested interest in keeping the whole party alive?

I said "create some sort of incentive for all the party members to survive" NOT "create some sort of incentive for all the party members that survive".

So the incentive would either only apply when everyone survives, or it scales based on the number of people surviving.

I am personally against more treasure enhancers, but hypothetically, what if there was:

Charm of Good Teamwork
Extra Treasure Chips per number of surviving players:
1-5: 2 Chips
6-9: 3 Chips
10: 4 Chips

Suppose there was a party of 2 experienced players with the CoGT and 8 newbies. The experienced players have a strong and vested interest in keeping the whole party alive (whereas right now, sometimes they are just focused on keeping themselves alive).

Hypothetically I am against your idea, but if there was one I would be all for it.....lol.

travis wrote: if jeff wanted to offer xp for true grind, i'd have no problem with it.

i would argue that big token buyers already get sufficient bonuses for that sort of support to TD in the form of additional tokens that are only available to people who spend that kind of money.

Yeah, except with the current difficulty levels and game structure, tokens aren't really that useful in TD. Or to be more specific, there are rapidly diminishing marginal returns, especially past the Red/Rare level.

i've also got no problem with volunteers getting xp. they support TD more than most. however, some have already argued that they are compensated well enough through the unique tokens they get, which is a fair point.

I disagree given that TD (GenCon at least) is consistently short on volunteers. And the current rewards aren't sufficient to compel a lot of players to help out.

Incognito wrote:
I disagree given that TD (GenCon at least) is consistently short on good volunteers. And the current rewards aren't sufficient to compel a lot of players to help out.

Here I fixed that for you.

jedibcg wrote:

Incognito wrote:
I disagree given that TD (GenCon at least) is consistently short on good volunteers. And the current rewards aren't sufficient to compel a lot of players to help out.

Here I fixed that for you.

Agreed!

I considered clarifying that myself but didn't want to introduce another controversial topic.

There are a good chunk of TD volunteers who range from "meh" to "absolutely terrible." (A large proportion of them have never played TD, and probably don't even care about XP).

I think the best volunteers are those who play and know the game. But a lot of such players do not volunteer. I think more incentives are needed to convince these players to cross the threshold.

balthasar wrote: If you increase the XP per year that a player can earn, wouldn't you have to change the XP needed for each level? Jeff may have planned for it to take a certain amount of time for players to reach each level, and purchased the items needed to reward those players. If people start hitting lv6 faster, that means more medallions needed. He would also need more 'elite' lanyards and lv8 pins, as people would get to those levels faster as well.

seems to me that having to print more medallions/buy more lanyards would be a good problem to have since every player that is reaching those levels is doing so by paying for the runs to get the xp to get to those levels.

Incognito wrote: I think the best volunteers are those who play and know the game. But a lot of such players do not volunteer. I think more incentives are needed to convince these players to cross the threshold.

I think that makes an assumption that more incentives can turn players into volunteers. I am not saying it cannot but it is not a guarantee.

The more people that volunteer, the better. We can always find a role for someone.

Volunteering is really a great way to invest in TD and be a bigger part of something special.

Incognito wrote:

travis wrote: i've also got no problem with volunteers getting xp. they support TD more than most. however, some have already argued that they are compensated well enough through the unique tokens they get, which is a fair point.

I disagree given that TD (GenCon at least) is consistently short on volunteers. And the current rewards aren't sufficient to compel a lot of players to help out.

well thats a fair argument. i'd certainly defer to others who have more knowledge of the volunteer supply as to whether the incentives need to be increased or not.

travis wrote:

balthasar wrote: If you increase the XP per year that a player can earn, wouldn't you have to change the XP needed for each level? Jeff may have planned for it to take a certain amount of time for players to reach each level, and purchased the items needed to reward those players. If people start hitting lv6 faster, that means more medallions needed. He would also need more 'elite' lanyards and lv8 pins, as people would get to those levels faster as well.

seems to me that having to print more medallions/buy more lanyards would be a good problem to have since every player that is reaching those levels is doing so by paying for the runs to get the xp to get to those levels.

i should also clarify that i make these arguments as a person who will almost certainly only ever go to gencon. the other cons sound fun but i definitely can't make that many trips each year.

balthasar wrote: If you increase the XP per year that a player can earn, wouldn't you have to change the XP needed for each level? Jeff may have planned for it to take a certain amount of time for players to reach each level, and purchased the items needed to reward those players. If people start hitting lv6 faster, that means more medallions needed. He would also need more 'elite' lanyards and lv8 pins, as people would get to those levels faster as well.

I think it s highly likely the XP needed per level would increase.