TOPIC: Thanks and Thoughts on True Dungeon GENCON 2018

Mike Steele wrote:

Aegoce wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: Given the wide gap in tokens, I'd prefer goals like this:
Normal: playable with a sealed pack, but challenging
Hardcore: playable with some Reds, as well as several URs, and some Relics, 5th level helpful
Nightmare: Best played with URs, Relics, Eldritch, possibly some Legendary. 5th level necessary
Epic: Challenging for Best in Class builds.

I feel that's too big of a jump from normal to hardcore. It goes from normal targetting additional investment of 0-$20 dollars per person to hardcore targetting additional investment of $700+ per person (~200 to get to 5th level, ~300 for a relic, ~200 for a couple more URs) if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly.

I think maybe some people's experience/impressions are different significantly due to whether they've got a full group with charm of synergy or not. Everybody having that extra 10 HP buffer from one slot really does have a huge impact on survivability and sense of urgency from the healers. The only reason we didn't have a death in N1 pick up group room 1 hardcore was because part of the group had a few sets of 4 tokens that collectively gave +9 hp to loan out to a couple players that came in with roughly a '3 extra bags' level collection.

From a dollars perspective, that is kind of how I see it.

Normal: 0 - Tens of Dollars
Hardcore: Hundreds of Dollars
Nightmare: Thousands of Dollars
Epic: Ten Thousand Plus

It seems to me like if you price Hardcore below that level, the jump from Normal to Hardcore is too small, and the jump from Hardcore to Nightmare is too large. That was actually the decision I made back in 2006, I didn't have enough tokens in 2005 to do Hardcore, so I did spend hundreds of dollars in 2006 to enable the switch to Hardcore. And of course it skyrocketed from there.

I think hundreds should be about 200, not 700 or 800. That's just me.

At least we are in the same ball park

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Aegoce wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: Given the wide gap in tokens, I'd prefer goals like this:
Normal: playable with a sealed pack, but challenging
Hardcore: playable with some Reds, as well as several URs, and some Relics, 5th level helpful
Nightmare: Best played with URs, Relics, Eldritch, possibly some Legendary. 5th level necessary
Epic: Challenging for Best in Class builds.

I feel that's too big of a jump from normal to hardcore. It goes from normal targetting additional investment of 0-$20 dollars per person to hardcore targetting additional investment of $700+ per person (~200 to get to 5th level, ~300 for a relic, ~200 for a couple more URs) if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly.

I think maybe some people's experience/impressions are different significantly due to whether they've got a full group with charm of synergy or not. Everybody having that extra 10 HP buffer from one slot really does have a huge impact on survivability and sense of urgency from the healers. The only reason we didn't have a death in N1 pick up group room 1 hardcore was because part of the group had a few sets of 4 tokens that collectively gave +9 hp to loan out to a couple players that came in with roughly a '3 extra bags' level collection.

From a dollars perspective, that is kind of how I see it.

Normal: 0 - Tens of Dollars
Hardcore: Hundreds of Dollars
Nightmare: Thousands of Dollars
Epic: Ten Thousand Plus

It seems to me like if you price Hardcore below that level, the jump from Normal to Hardcore is too small, and the jump from Hardcore to Nightmare is too large. That was actually the decision I made back in 2006, I didn't have enough tokens in 2005 to do Hardcore, so I did spend hundreds of dollars in 2006 to enable the switch to Hardcore. And of course it skyrocketed from there.

I think hundreds should be about 200, not 700 or 800. That's just me.

At least we are in the same ball park

Well, hardcored should accommodate both; players with all reds and only one or two UR, up to the players with +1 level, 1-2 relic, a handful of URs, and the rest reds.

Nightmare needs to cover the all UR builds (where reds are a choice vs budget issue), but you dont NEED relic+, just be aware that it will be much more difficult as nightmare should be tuned to players with some relics. But nightmare also needs to handle players that have lots of relics and even legendaries, but they dont want to step up to epic (it is fine for the dungeon to be easier for this group, just not complete cake-walk...if the multuple legendary crowd want a more threatening dungeon, there is now epic).

kurtreznor wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Aegoce wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: Given the wide gap in tokens, I'd prefer goals like this:
Normal: playable with a sealed pack, but challenging
Hardcore: playable with some Reds, as well as several URs, and some Relics, 5th level helpful
Nightmare: Best played with URs, Relics, Eldritch, possibly some Legendary. 5th level necessary
Epic: Challenging for Best in Class builds.

I feel that's too big of a jump from normal to hardcore. It goes from normal targetting additional investment of 0-$20 dollars per person to hardcore targetting additional investment of $700+ per person (~200 to get to 5th level, ~300 for a relic, ~200 for a couple more URs) if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly.

I think maybe some people's experience/impressions are different significantly due to whether they've got a full group with charm of synergy or not. Everybody having that extra 10 HP buffer from one slot really does have a huge impact on survivability and sense of urgency from the healers. The only reason we didn't have a death in N1 pick up group room 1 hardcore was because part of the group had a few sets of 4 tokens that collectively gave +9 hp to loan out to a couple players that came in with roughly a '3 extra bags' level collection.

From a dollars perspective, that is kind of how I see it.

Normal: 0 - Tens of Dollars
Hardcore: Hundreds of Dollars
Nightmare: Thousands of Dollars
Epic: Ten Thousand Plus

It seems to me like if you price Hardcore below that level, the jump from Normal to Hardcore is too small, and the jump from Hardcore to Nightmare is too large. That was actually the decision I made back in 2006, I didn't have enough tokens in 2005 to do Hardcore, so I did spend hundreds of dollars in 2006 to enable the switch to Hardcore. And of course it skyrocketed from there.

I think hundreds should be about 200, not 700 or 800. That's just me.

At least we are in the same ball park

Well, hardcored should accommodate both; players with all reds and only one or two UR, up to the players with +1 level, 1-2 relic, a handful of URs, and the rest reds.

Nightmare needs to cover the all UR builds (where reds are a choice vs budget issue), but you dont NEED relic+, just be aware that it will be much more difficult as nightmare should be tuned to players with some relics. But nightmare also needs to handle players that have lots of relics and even legendaries, but they dont want to step up to epic (it is fine for the dungeon to be easier for this group, just not complete cake-walk...if the multuple legendary crowd want a more threatening dungeon, there is now epic).

That's where I think the problem with scaling Nightmare comes in. It's pretty difficult to try to make it an appropriate difficulty level for both a straight UR build and a build with lots of Relics & Legendary tokens (and Eldritch). It's going to be too easy for one or too difficult for the other.

Mike Steele wrote:

kurtreznor wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Aegoce wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: Given the wide gap in tokens, I'd prefer goals like this:
Normal: playable with a sealed pack, but challenging
Hardcore: playable with some Reds, as well as several URs, and some Relics, 5th level helpful
Nightmare: Best played with URs, Relics, Eldritch, possibly some Legendary. 5th level necessary
Epic: Challenging for Best in Class builds.

I feel that's too big of a jump from normal to hardcore. It goes from normal targetting additional investment of 0-$20 dollars per person to hardcore targetting additional investment of $700+ per person (~200 to get to 5th level, ~300 for a relic, ~200 for a couple more URs) if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly.

I think maybe some people's experience/impressions are different significantly due to whether they've got a full group with charm of synergy or not. Everybody having that extra 10 HP buffer from one slot really does have a huge impact on survivability and sense of urgency from the healers. The only reason we didn't have a death in N1 pick up group room 1 hardcore was because part of the group had a few sets of 4 tokens that collectively gave +9 hp to loan out to a couple players that came in with roughly a '3 extra bags' level collection.

From a dollars perspective, that is kind of how I see it.

Normal: 0 - Tens of Dollars
Hardcore: Hundreds of Dollars
Nightmare: Thousands of Dollars
Epic: Ten Thousand Plus

It seems to me like if you price Hardcore below that level, the jump from Normal to Hardcore is too small, and the jump from Hardcore to Nightmare is too large. That was actually the decision I made back in 2006, I didn't have enough tokens in 2005 to do Hardcore, so I did spend hundreds of dollars in 2006 to enable the switch to Hardcore. And of course it skyrocketed from there.

I think hundreds should be about 200, not 700 or 800. That's just me.

At least we are in the same ball park

Well, hardcored should accommodate both; players with all reds and only one or two UR, up to the players with +1 level, 1-2 relic, a handful of URs, and the rest reds.

Nightmare needs to cover the all UR builds (where reds are a choice vs budget issue), but you dont NEED relic+, just be aware that it will be much more difficult as nightmare should be tuned to players with some relics. But nightmare also needs to handle players that have lots of relics and even legendaries, but they dont want to step up to epic (it is fine for the dungeon to be easier for this group, just not complete cake-walk...if the multuple legendary crowd want a more threatening dungeon, there is now epic).

That's where I think the problem with scaling Nightmare comes in. It's pretty difficult to try to make it an appropriate difficulty level for both a straight UR build and a build with lots of Relics & Legendary tokens (and Eldritch). It's going to be too easy for one or too difficult for the other.

I imagine the same thing comes with hardcore, yes? Its going to be pretty difficult to scale that for 10 lvl 4 characters with all reds, all the way to 10 level 5s with 4-5 purples each and maybe a relic on top of that?

Endgame wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

kurtreznor wrote:

Wade Schwendemann wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Aegoce wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: Given the wide gap in tokens, I'd prefer goals like this:
Normal: playable with a sealed pack, but challenging
Hardcore: playable with some Reds, as well as several URs, and some Relics, 5th level helpful
Nightmare: Best played with URs, Relics, Eldritch, possibly some Legendary. 5th level necessary
Epic: Challenging for Best in Class builds.

I feel that's too big of a jump from normal to hardcore. It goes from normal targetting additional investment of 0-$20 dollars per person to hardcore targetting additional investment of $700+ per person (~200 to get to 5th level, ~300 for a relic, ~200 for a couple more URs) if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly.

I think maybe some people's experience/impressions are different significantly due to whether they've got a full group with charm of synergy or not. Everybody having that extra 10 HP buffer from one slot really does have a huge impact on survivability and sense of urgency from the healers. The only reason we didn't have a death in N1 pick up group room 1 hardcore was because part of the group had a few sets of 4 tokens that collectively gave +9 hp to loan out to a couple players that came in with roughly a '3 extra bags' level collection.

From a dollars perspective, that is kind of how I see it.

Normal: 0 - Tens of Dollars
Hardcore: Hundreds of Dollars
Nightmare: Thousands of Dollars
Epic: Ten Thousand Plus

It seems to me like if you price Hardcore below that level, the jump from Normal to Hardcore is too small, and the jump from Hardcore to Nightmare is too large. That was actually the decision I made back in 2006, I didn't have enough tokens in 2005 to do Hardcore, so I did spend hundreds of dollars in 2006 to enable the switch to Hardcore. And of course it skyrocketed from there.

I think hundreds should be about 200, not 700 or 800. That's just me.

At least we are in the same ball park

Well, hardcored should accommodate both; players with all reds and only one or two UR, up to the players with +1 level, 1-2 relic, a handful of URs, and the rest reds.

Nightmare needs to cover the all UR builds (where reds are a choice vs budget issue), but you dont NEED relic+, just be aware that it will be much more difficult as nightmare should be tuned to players with some relics. But nightmare also needs to handle players that have lots of relics and even legendaries, but they dont want to step up to epic (it is fine for the dungeon to be easier for this group, just not complete cake-walk...if the multuple legendary crowd want a more threatening dungeon, there is now epic).

That's where I think the problem with scaling Nightmare comes in. It's pretty difficult to try to make it an appropriate difficulty level for both a straight UR build and a build with lots of Relics & Legendary tokens (and Eldritch). It's going to be too easy for one or too difficult for the other.

I imagine the same thing comes with hardcore, yes? Its going to be pretty difficult to scale that for 10 lvl 4 characters with all reds, all the way to 10 level 5s with 4-5 purples each and maybe a relic on top of that?

Very true. Which is why I don't think Hardcore should be scaled to someone with all Reds, I think it should be scaled to someone with Reds and at least a few Purples. It's inevitable that there will have to be some jumps between difficulty levels, simply because of the vast difference between having a starting 10 pack and having a Best In Every Slot build the four levels have to cover. If you figure Normal is a starting 10 pack and Epic is a total BIS build, Hardcore and Nightmare have to be spaced to fill the gaps in that.

I concur that successfully completing a Hardcore run with an optimum rare build should be difficult if not impossible. Perhaps with a great party and great teamwork you should make it to the final room, and then probably die in there.

I agree that Hardcore should target a build that costs "hundreds". Specifically I'd place it at around the $500 mark. That would be 3 or 4 URs plus a bunch of good rare tokens.

My reasoning is: for a game with builds ranging from $0 to $20,000, and only 4 difficulties, you can't have Hardcore very close to the $0 mark. If you are a player paying as much as $78 to play each time, and you want to play "Hardcore" which is obviously not easy, I don't think a $500 build is unattainable. If somebody doesn't want to spend that money or effort (and there is nothing wrong with that) then they can play on Normal difficulty.

So my four build targets would be $5, $500, $5,000, $15,000 (the mathematician in me would have loved to make that last one $50k but of course that's not currently possible).

Kirk Bauer wrote: I concur that successfully completing a Hardcore run with an optimum rare build should be difficult if not impossible. Perhaps with a great party and great teamwork you should make it to the final room, and then probably die in there.

I agree that Hardcore should target a build that costs "hundreds". Specifically I'd place it at around the $500 mark. That would be 3 or 4 URs plus a bunch of good rare tokens.

My reasoning is: for a game with builds ranging from $0 to $20,000, and only 4 difficulties, you can't have Hardcore very close to the $0 mark. If you are a player paying as much as $78 to play each time, and you want to play "Hardcore" which is obviously not easy, I don't think a $500 build is unattainable. If somebody doesn't want to spend that money or effort (and there is nothing wrong with that) then they can play on Normal difficulty.

So my four build targets would be $5, $500, $5,000, $15,000 (the mathematician in me would have loved to make that last one $50k but of course that's not currently possible).

I don't specifically have a problem with your description of hardcore. However, I believe the current TD material says that you only need 3 token packs to complete hardcore - this needs to be updated to reflect what you actually need. It would be really, really good if the difficulties were well explained somewhere on the main TD site.

We are forgetting a difficulty.

Non-Lethal.

Perhaps normal shouldn't be targeted for those with only 1 pack? Have non lethal be targeted at those with only 1 pack, and normal for those with all slots filled and mostly reds, hardcore for all level 5 (as level 5 alone is running around 200-300 at this point), and so on?

Kirk Bauer wrote: I concur that successfully completing a Hardcore run with an optimum rare build should be difficult if not impossible. Perhaps with a great party and great teamwork you should make it to the final room, and then probably die in there.

I agree that Hardcore should target a build that costs "hundreds". Specifically I'd place it at around the $500 mark. That would be 3 or 4 URs plus a bunch of good rare tokens.

My reasoning is: for a game with builds ranging from $0 to $20,000, and only 4 difficulties, you can't have Hardcore very close to the $0 mark. If you are a player paying as much as $78 to play each time, and you want to play "Hardcore" which is obviously not easy, I don't think a $500 build is unattainable. If somebody doesn't want to spend that money or effort (and there is nothing wrong with that) then they can play on Normal difficulty.

So my four build targets would be $5, $500, $5,000, $15,000 (the mathematician in me would have loved to make that last one $50k but of course that's not currently possible).

Is $50K unobtainable now, if someone were to buy one each of every top end (Legendary, Eldritch, Dragon Orb, etc) token for each slot? It would be interesting to see what the most expensive build would be, based on secondary market prices.

I do agree with your dollar amounts, except that Normal might technically be 0 since it's designed to be able to be played with your free starting pack.

That's the main reason I'm keeping my group at the Hardcore Level, because of the expense to achieve (and more importantly to maintain due to token obsolescence and power creep) a Nightmare build for the entire group. Plus mine is a more casual group, that just has more fun at the Hardcore level.

Mike Steele wrote: From a dollars perspective, that is kind of how I see it.

Normal: 0 - Tens of Dollars
Hardcore: Hundreds of Dollars
Nightmare: Thousands of Dollars
Epic: Ten Thousand Plus

I think hardcore should be an option for a group*** that doesn't invest significantly in builds and that finds normal rather easy. This philosophy is very different from the idea of trying to put hardcore evenly between normal and nightmare. This philosophy places hardcore more as "You know how to play, you are good at puzzles and/or combat, give yourself a challenge."

With this philosophy, I see the investment for hardcore being more like floor of $50. Forget number of sealed packs, sealed packs are too random unless you are invested in trading. Now, a $50 investment is going to mean it's a challenge. With a $500 investment from each player in a full group, I wouldn't expect much of a challenge.

*** I think there's an assumption that only pertains to a smaller piece of the playerbase. If you have a group of 10 that buys out runs or arrange on forums ahead of time, then you can control for number of players in a run and for a consistency of builds. PUGs have neither. Less than full runs are common, far more so outside of GC. Runs where some players could be playing nightmare and others are trying to find a common ranged weapon are rather normal [sic] in my experience.

So, let's say you have a PUG run with, oh, 8 players. There's maybe some lending to make sealed pack players not likely to die and more likely to contribute in combat, but it's a group that has players with UR builds, let's say just $1000 (got to love TD's economy) put into their build, and other players with some rares lent to them so they didn't put any money into their builds. Is this a hardcore viable group? Should it be?

Let's say the non-UR players have mostly red builds in this 8 player group. Does that make for a hardcore group?

There's another issue with determining what's hardcore and what's not. Different players want different things. Some want a challenge. Some want a better completion token and more XP. To different extents, I prefer hardcore over normal for both reasons. I find normal a level where I can disengage if I'm running around with 60+ hp as the dungeon can't really do anything to me until room 7. Now, I can play eight token builds or whatever to make things more challenging and still be entertained by my builds (maybe even run a +1 Quarterstaff in my eight token barbarian build on hardcore), but I'm already doing something like that at the hardcore level to make things more interesting, so normal defeats my having a substantial collection of tokens I want to play with.

Also, there may still be combat runs versus puzzle runs going forward. I believe there are many players of TD who prefer puzzles and don't care so much about putting money into builds. They would sign up for puzzle runs and, if they are really good at puzzles, they won't take much damage outside of combat, which means they don't need to put as much money into builds and still get a more properly balanced run. In general, at lower levels of play, I find puzzles far more deadly. But, should that change at hardcore or change at nightmare or is it just that there should be a balance in deadliness between combat and puzzles?

Anyway, may be lost, but a point is that PUGs are both very common and don't make for easy analysis. A group of 10 who play together all of the time can play hardcore with sealed packs because that doesn't mess up the experience for others, but the PUG with a mix of builds at very different levels who might have six players or might have ten makes guidelines based on money invested or rarity of build far more difficult. Again, I prefer guidelines based more on how many HP everyone has (single most important thing for getting to room 7) and what to hit values the sliding classes have, but even that doesn't account for groups where the UR player wins each fight while the common-er feels useless in combat. (I actually don't mind feeling useless in combat if the party succeeds/has fun, but not everyone has my personality/interests.)

Endgame wrote: We are forgetting a difficulty.

Non-Lethal.

Perhaps normal shouldn't be targeted for those with only 1 pack? Have non lethal be targeted at those with only 1 pack, and normal for those with all slots filled and mostly reds, hardcore for all level 5 (as level 5 alone is running around 200-300 at this point), and so on?

As a coach, I really try to recommend non-lethal to groups of 10 newbies (or even a few fairly new players) but even they will often turn it down. I don't have specific data but I would guess that few use non-lethal.

From Kirk's Post:
So my four build targets would be $5, $500, $5,000, $15,000

So combining those two, I would recommend
Non-Lethal $0 starters
Normal Mostly Red builds $100-$500
Hardcore $300-$5000 But be warned if you're on the low end of the spectrum you're liable to die early in the adventure
Nightmare $5000-$15,000 At least half of the group should be outfitted near the higher end
Epic ??????

Bob Chasan wrote:

Endgame wrote: We are forgetting a difficulty.

Non-Lethal.

Perhaps normal shouldn't be targeted for those with only 1 pack? Have non lethal be targeted at those with only 1 pack, and normal for those with all slots filled and mostly reds, hardcore for all level 5 (as level 5 alone is running around 200-300 at this point), and so on?

As a coach, I really try to recommend non-lethal to groups of 10 newbies (or even a few fairly new players) but even they will often turn it down. I don't have specific data but I would guess that few use non-lethal.

From Kirk's Post:
So my four build targets would be $5, $500, $5,000, $15,000

So combining those two, I would recommend
Non-Lethal $0 starters
Normal Mostly Red builds $100-$500
Hardcore $300-$5000 But be warned if you're on the low end of the spectrum you're liable to die early in the adventure
Nightmare $5000-$15,000 At least half of the group should be outfitted near the higher end
Epic ??????

You could probably ask 100 of us how we view the difficulty levels and where they should be set, and you'll probably get 100 different answers.

So, since everyone else is chiming in, here is My $0.02:

A veteran group doing a sealed pack run should be able to defeat Normal (or at least make it to Room 7) if they work well together, slide well, know their memorization, and play smart. If it that isn't possible, we've probably set the bar too high for Normal.

A veteran group that has no URs, but does have slots filled mostly with Rares/Enhanced/Exalted ought to be able to tackle Hardcore and make a good showing of themselves. Basically, people ought to be able to move on to Hardcore by virtue of playing the game for many years, without having to drop $100s of dollars on the secondary market.

Nightmare is where you ought to start needing URs and Relics to survive. Some Rares are fine, but you should at least have Enhanced/Exalted in spots that can have them.

Epic you probably shouldn't have any Rares left (barring special cases like Cham of Enlightenment). Any slot that can be a Relic/Legendary probably ought to be, and even then you might not survive.