TOPIC: Transmute Ideas Please!

If you two derail thread, I am blaming archmage.

archmage78 wrote: Are you saying that at the TE nuggets will be able to be combined?

~2.5 years ago, Jeff said :

Jeff Martin wrote: Due to many factors and the development of the "Nugget" Ioun Stones, I thought it would be best to go ahead and make these clarifications.

1) We will publish an Ioun Stone Silver Nugget (+2 Treasure Coins) in 2017, an Ioun Stone Gold Nugget (+2 Treasure Coins) in 2019, and an Ioun Stone Platinum Nugget (+2 Treasure Coins) in 2021. These three tokens will stack with each other because they have slightly different names. They will stack with the Charm of Avarice.

2) There will be no transmuted token that uses any of the three Ioun Stone Nuggets in its recipe.

3) Assuming Gen Con and TD is still around in about ten years (2026) , the Amulet of Treasure Finding will be used in a transmuted token recipe to make a better treasure-enhancing token. It will be combined with whatever TE-tokens come out in 2023 and 2025.

I know it is a bit crazy to make these pronouncements this far into the future, but it appears to be needed. Thanks for your patience and support.

Brad Mortensen wrote: @Mike Steele:

Close. I’ve no objection to more TEs in general. I’m more about not raising the max loot any one player can draw.

Hoping that ticket prices will keep rising as a way to limit farmers’ profit and justify endlessly spiraling loot draws seems perverse to me. It’s asking newbies to subsidize our insatiable greed by paying more for loot they won’t be getting. That’s how I look at it. But maybe that’s just me.

But yeah, Mike and I agree on a lot of other things.

My expectation is that ticket prices will continue to go up. My hope is that they don't. I agree with you that higher ticket prices might be more likely to discourage players without a lot of TEs to play, which is the vast majority of players.

jedibcg wrote: If you two derail thread, I am blaming archmage.

Did he transmute the thread into one about TEs?

I think this year’s 3-star should be something consumable. Like a “Potion of Bull-Kitty” - combined Bull and Cat into one, maybe heal 3 pts while you’re at it.

Too many slotless things lately.

I'd love to see a nice transmute which has the entire recipe consisting of a bunch of Mystic Silk, Philosopher's Stone, and Darkwood Plank. There are SO many of those, they need a major transmute sink.

Regarding the ranger relic and legendary. I would be against anything that gave bonus damage to favored enemies, even if the list of said enemies was expanded. Seems too situational. Also, I think it could limit design space (e.g., we have to have one of these types of creatures, otherwise a legendary is basically useless (rangers rarely need more dexterity)).

My two cents. And note, it's happy hour and I'm posting this on my phone. Thus, I may not be too articulate....

Picc wrote:

300pounder wrote: What i mean by costly is 4 trophies which average like 8.50 then the ingrediants like 11 for all 3 your looking close to 50$ basically for a new player who doesnt know if they even want to continue playing, its alot just for +1,
Everything im posting to the 2020 developement is with new players first in mind, not what benifits NM players

We have to keep the NM players in mind though. Lets say we make a very cheap for what it does transmute like charm of health. It sells out instantly, or get limited to X per person. The NM players aren't going to just ignore it. The core problem is anything you make super easy to entice those who don't really care that much will also be super tempting for those that care a lot to abuse. Honestly I'm starting to feel more and more like were chasing after a phantom audience we will never be able to please.

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Endgame wrote: Well, they probably won't buy a 250 order when you can order a UR TE from the various tokens sites for 100 (ish). On top of that, most of the money for TE is not going to go to TD anyway, but to the token sites.

I very much disagree with the way this characterizes the token stores. IMO they do us a lot more good then harm and I could be wrong but I don't think many of them run much of a profit.

Endgame wrote: With only one TE in print, if the new player in question wants to actually pull a reasonable amount of treasure (around 12), they are going to need to pickup: Gold Nugget, Silver Nugget (small markup from 3rd party site), AoTF (huge markup from 3rd party site) and possible a charm of good fortune (huge markup)

So in order for treasure to be considered reasonable you need to be able to quickly and cheaply access over 50% of what some people have paid literally thousand of dollars to be able to do. Try and keep in mind that the vast majority of people who play TD consider 3 chips to be reasonable. Sure you can say I'm the pot calling the kettle black but this comes across as very entitled.

Endgame wrote: But, stepping beyond that, what harm is there in allowing the newbie to get 5 or 6 total draws without having to invest in a UR?

Well UR represent a significant portion of TDs income so there's that. But more so right now a minority of players who have invested heavily in TD draw a lot of treasure. Odds are this is a good move since odds are also good they will be back to buy more stuff next year. Frankly its the same reason casinos comp high rollers. You want to keep the big spenders playing more than you want to bring new people in the door. New people will come in look and look around on there own. And honestly most of them wont change their oppinians of TD one way or the other based on tokens. But lets assume we give them more stuff too with minimal up front investment. I suspect it would be less of a good move. Most of them likely wouldnt reilize they had been given anything of value since it was free anyway. This also says nothing about what it would cost TD to give away 4x the amount of treasure it does now (12 is reasonable right).
It is interesting that you use casinos as your proof when they are just about the only business that uses this and you actually miss understand it because it actually isn't like you describe. Business actually cares about new customers far more. It is why all the discounts for buying cell phones go to new customers. It is why credit card companies give massive bonuses to new customers. It is why direct TV gives discounts to new customers....I'm sorry but you are wrong in your understanding of how businesses operate. The vast majority spend most of their time getting new customers. The new client is the single most important thing they consider.

archmage78 wrote: It is interesting that you use casinos as your proof when they are just about the only business that uses this and you actually miss understand it because it actually isn't like you describe. Business actually cares about new customers far more. It is why all the discounts for buying cell phones go to new customers. It is why credit card companies give massive bonuses to new customers. It is why direct TV gives discounts to new customers....I'm sorry but you are wrong in your understanding of how businesses operate. The vast majority spend most of their time getting new customers. The new client is the single most important thing they consider.

You're both correct and incorrect. Different companies in different situations behave differently. Many companies (like your DirecTV example) treat new customers so well because they know it is a pain to change once they have you. That inertia means they can focus more on winning new customers knowing they won't lose many existing customers unless they truly piss people off.

Also in your DirectTV example, one customer is pretty equivalent to another customer. You and your neighbor are worth roughly the same amount to DirectTV. But they do have customers that matter a lot more to them (like corporate accounts) and you can bet those existing customers get attention. Retention activities become much more important when a customer is representing entire percentage points of your revenue.

These actually apply to all your examples.

Now translate that to TD... People that just buy tickets to runs are like your average DirecTV consumer. People that are buying the $8k orders are the corporate accounts.

Also, quitting TD doesn't require nearly as much effort as dropping DirecTV.

Fiddy wrote:

archmage78 wrote: It is interesting that you use casinos as your proof when they are just about the only business that uses this and you actually miss understand it because it actually isn't like you describe. Business actually cares about new customers far more. It is why all the discounts for buying cell phones go to new customers. It is why credit card companies give massive bonuses to new customers. It is why direct TV gives discounts to new customers....I'm sorry but you are wrong in your understanding of how businesses operate. The vast majority spend most of their time getting new customers. The new client is the single most important thing they consider.

You're both correct and incorrect. Different companies in different situations behave differently. Many companies (like your DirecTV example) treat new customers so well because they know it is a pain to change once they have you. That inertia means they can focus more on winning new customers knowing they won't lose many existing customers unless they truly piss people off.

Also in your DirectTV example, one customer is pretty equivalent to another customer. You and your neighbor are worth roughly the same amount to DirectTV. But they do have customers that matter a lot more to them (like corporate accounts) and you can bet those existing customers get attention. Retention activities become much more important when a customer is representing entire percentage points of your revenue.

These actually apply to all your examples.

Now translate that to TD... People that just buy tickets to runs are like your average DirecTV consumer. People that are buying the $8k orders are the corporate accounts.

Also, quitting TD doesn't require nearly as much effort as dropping DirecTV.

How many of those 8k orders are auctions or resellers? I don't think aggregate purchases hold as much weight, as those sales would just show up in another fashion.

To take the analogy a different direction for in game play per one of the other subjects of discussion, it doesn't matter how much you spend on your car, a Ferrari and a Honda still have to follow the same speed limit and the speed limit is not on the honor system.

Fiddy wrote:

archmage78 wrote: It is interesting that you use casinos as your proof when they are just about the only business that uses this and you actually miss understand it because it actually isn't like you describe. Business actually cares about new customers far more. It is why all the discounts for buying cell phones go to new customers. It is why credit card companies give massive bonuses to new customers. It is why direct TV gives discounts to new customers....I'm sorry but you are wrong in your understanding of how businesses operate. The vast majority spend most of their time getting new customers. The new client is the single most important thing they consider.

You're both correct and incorrect. Different companies in different situations behave differently. Many companies (like your DirecTV example) treat new customers so well because they know it is a pain to change once they have you. That inertia means they can focus more on winning new customers knowing they won't lose many existing customers unless they truly piss people off.

Also in your DirectTV example, one customer is pretty equivalent to another customer. You and your neighbor are worth roughly the same amount to DirectTV. But they do have customers that matter a lot more to them (like corporate accounts) and you can bet those existing customers get attention. Retention activities become much more important when a customer is representing entire percentage points of your revenue.

These actually apply to all your examples.

Now translate that to TD... People that just buy tickets to runs are like your average DirecTV consumer. People that are buying the $8k orders are the corporate accounts.

Also, quitting TD doesn't require nearly as much effort as dropping DirecTV.

There is also the increased cost involved in acquiring a new customer vs keeping one for most companies. But again we are getting off topic. Yes, I know I contributed to that.

jedibcg wrote:

Fiddy wrote:

archmage78 wrote: It is interesting that you use casinos as your proof when they are just about the only business that uses this and you actually miss understand it because it actually isn't like you describe. Business actually cares about new customers far more. It is why all the discounts for buying cell phones go to new customers. It is why credit card companies give massive bonuses to new customers. It is why direct TV gives discounts to new customers....I'm sorry but you are wrong in your understanding of how businesses operate. The vast majority spend most of their time getting new customers. The new client is the single most important thing they consider.

You're both correct and incorrect. Different companies in different situations behave differently. Many companies (like your DirecTV example) treat new customers so well because they know it is a pain to change once they have you. That inertia means they can focus more on winning new customers knowing they won't lose many existing customers unless they truly piss people off.

Also in your DirectTV example, one customer is pretty equivalent to another customer. You and your neighbor are worth roughly the same amount to DirectTV. But they do have customers that matter a lot more to them (like corporate accounts) and you can bet those existing customers get attention. Retention activities become much more important when a customer is representing entire percentage points of your revenue.

These actually apply to all your examples.

Now translate that to TD... People that just buy tickets to runs are like your average DirecTV consumer. People that are buying the $8k orders are the corporate accounts.

Also, quitting TD doesn't require nearly as much effort as dropping DirecTV.

There is also the increased cost involved in acquiring a new customer vs keeping one for most companies. But again we are getting off topic. Yes, I know I contributed to that.

To speak to archmages point, all the types of business you listed have revenue models based on monthly billing. If TD worked on a subscription model I'd agree that new customers should be prioritized since getting account open is the biggest thing. That's just not the case with TD though. There is no ongoing gym membership, it's all individual purchases. And as Fiddy pointed out all customers do not spend equally. I'm not saying new customers aren't important. They are very important, but we cant keep taking the established vets forgranted either because they took a lot to cultivate. How many new customers will play once and never again for every Trent who comes through the door?


And in terms of 8k orders being mostly auctions or splits.Those are only the ones you see, and even so dont act like they have no value.

Those auctions encourage people who might never make large orders to purchase URs at a lower cost then they otherwise could, Id imagine they also save TD a fair bit in time and postage. And while it's purely anecdotal they helped me bridge the gap between only being interested in reds to buying a few key pyps to making my own larger orders. I imagine having an easily available $100 price point option has done the same for a number of people.