TOPIC: Propsal: Hellish Difficulty XP and Treasure

George wrote:

Druegar wrote:

Kaledor wrote: (they really hated monster bits this year)

Would you mind elaborating on that please?

I hated the scarcity of monster bits. Out of 40ish tokens for 3 runs I only got 6 monster bits.

We had a group of almost ALL new players, each pulled 3 tokens... each pulled 1 - 3 monster bits. A few groups the new players pulled 3 monster bits each. They were very disappointed.

A few were returning from last year and asked which box is not the trophy box. So was some disappointed players that got monster bits and nothing to do with them. I did direct them to traders out front. /shrugs

1) random is random
2) 91 is not a sufficient sample size to dispute percentages

Why in the world would I requote your entire post when it's practically right above mine and anyone can see it? I think you're missing the point of the quote function. It's supposed to offer a reference point to what you're addressing (and in this case make the point to raven since I think she thought I was referencing her) and it's clear that what you were claiming, that adding extra rewards to a new difficulty level could somehow decrease token buying. That is patently bullshite (Anglostyle representin'). It is however on the golden path of self interest which is why we know it's a 100% mike certified point.

If you have to draw a relationship with whether more people will buy tokens if there were a new difficulty level that offered....say, a new completion token and people who would buy less tokens because there were a new completion token, it'd be pretty hard to argue there's more of the latter than the former. It's just the way it is. Plenty of people won't increase their buy because they're happy playing where they are, but plenty of people will happily chase that new brass ring. I guess theoretically there are a few sour grapes people who could stop buying entirely because they don't want to spend the extra money and if they can't get all the rewards well they're going to take their ball and go home. Lets face it, those people weren't playing in the first place or buying tokens for Raven's 'love of the game'.

Arcanist Kolixela wrote: Ultra Nightmare mode - Gives +1 Treasure Chip, Gives +1 XP, Gives Ultra Nightmare Survival Pin (no pin on death)

Thoughts?

I like this suggestion. I do feel that 'Hell' level would need a little something extra, but very little. the button should/would be the most important thing. the 1XP would just be to brag on the ranking board without impacting the order. and one extra treasure chip? ::shrug::

henwy wrote: Why in the world would I requote your entire post when it's practically right above mine and anyone can see it? I think you're missing the point of the quote function. It's supposed to offer a reference point to what you're addressing (and in this case make the point to raven since I think she thought I was referencing her) and it's clear that what you were claiming, that adding extra rewards to a new difficulty level could somehow decrease token buying. That is patently bullshite (Anglostyle representin'). It is however on the golden path of self interest which is why we know it's a 100% mike certified point.

If you have to draw a relationship with whether more people will buy tokens if there were a new difficulty level that offered....say, a new completion token and people who would buy less tokens because there were a new completion token, it'd be pretty hard to argue there's more of the latter than the former. It's just the way it is. Plenty of people won't increase their buy because they're happy playing where they are, but plenty of people will happily chase that new brass ring. I guess theoretically there are a few sour grapes people who could stop buying entirely because they don't want to spend the extra money and if they can't get all the rewards well they're going to take their ball and go home. Lets face it, those people weren't playing in the first place or buying tokens for Raven's 'love of the game'.

Once a Troll, always a Troll.

Druegar wrote: 1) random is random
2) 91 is not a sufficient sample size to dispute percentages

No it is not nearly enough. My point was to highlight the variability and a few possible reasons other than simple randomness.

Hello Folks;

Though I'm not opposed to new difficulty levels, I would rather work within what we've got. Of main concern are the volunteers and players. Whatever that is done, it must be simple and "least cumbersome" on all. I have heard about some groups running different levels with only certain levels of tokens. For example, I heard of a group that ran on only red (and lower) tokens on hardcore. It presents a challenge. It is self governed. And requires some token acquisition. Could a run evolve about a green (and lower) normal run? Maybe there could be black, green, red stickers so people could show how though they ran, and show just how little they had? This does lead into henwy's point, but let's see the challenge. Let's have players create their own difficuly and give all of the tokens some play time. The last thing the True Dungeon community needs to do is add more unwanted common, uncommon, rare and obsolete tokens to the landfill that is Mount Carbondale.

On another tangent, maybe this thread has another avenue? Instead of more rewards, XP, treasure, etc.; what about less? Look at True Grind. It has only a completion token. Nothing else. What if, in order to play this increased difficulty, you had to pay? Say a rare magic item or gold. After all, the road to hell is paved with gold (or is it good intentions?) This would give gold more meaning. No xp, treasure chips or completion tokens. Just a different completion button?

Mike Steele wrote:

henwy wrote: {'S Truth}

Once a Troll, always a Troll.

Bridge OG representin' but it's veracity through and through. There are few old timers who don't know Mikey's all about Mikey.

Raven wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: Maybe just add something called Nightmare-plus (tm)

Here's how it works: add a box to the party card called "Nightmare-plus," and the last thing the party does is tell the coach what number to enter into that box, from 1 to 100. Higher, if sanity is not an issue.

The DMs use nightmare stats, and add the chosen number to the monsters' AC and saving throw bonuses, and all combat/push/puzzle-fail damage. (Or the players can add the damage themselves so the DM only has to deal with AC). Maybe each monster gets extra HP equal to 10 or 20 or 50 times that modifier, too.

Just thinking out loud here, but would this be (vaguely) similar to the previous suggestions of "scaled" difficulty? Only, it's parties themselves who would be doing the scaling?

If... for every +1 on "Nightmare +"

* You add 1pt of push damage/puzzle fail damage/timed damage
* The monster's AC goes up by 1
* The monster's to-hit goes up by 1
* The Monster's saves go up by 1
* The monster's HP goes up by 10

Then you can have parties self-select a "Hellish" level by saying "Nightmare+10, please."

I think that, as a DM, I could handle that math (a lot easier than the sliding scale which would involve a whole et of stats to work with)

It would add no extra work for the Coach (other than writing a number after a + sign.

It would add no extra work for Epilogue (they just give out rewards as per Nightmare)

Then parties can come here and brag about their NM+ run, but only if they don't get TPK'ed. Whatever team has chosen the highest NM+ modifier and has the most survivors at the end (at least one) is proclaimed champions. Winners get to gloat and be acknowledged as demigods by their fellow players. Losers whine about bad slides and crazy die rolls and vow to be champions next time.

*snicker* It's like you know how this bragging thing works.
(And for reference, the dice do totally hate some people.)

But XP, loot and completion rewards stay the same, and each group can make it as challenging as they want.

^^ This, I think, would be very important to game balance.

The only "perk" I could imagine being different is this:

Make the Nightmare Survivor Badge have a convenient (mostly) blank space next to the word Nightmare. Have a Sharpie on hand in Epilogue, and if players want to write in their Nightmare PLUS level in that space, they can do it.

People still get the same Nightmare survivor (or Victim?) badge as anyone else, but they can customize for bragging rights.

I think this makes the most sense of any idea so far I've seen. The main reason is that it is logistically impossible with the diversity of token builds out there to make a difficulty level that can handle every group that would want to run on it. You set a new "Hell" level at BiS and even amongst BiS groups (because of mix of classes, etc.) you are going to have groups that find it easy and others that find it impossible. And let's face it, you'll have groups that aren't BiS try for the challenge and complain if they die in room 1.

By going with a sliding scale (which the players decide themselves), the party can decide just how tough or easy their adventure will be.

And I am definitely in the camp of NO EXTRA REWARDS of any kind for either Nightmare+ levels or a new Hell level. If you want a challenge, it should be for the challenge not for the rewards.

Fizzikx wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong here but TD has always felt to me like a "pay to win" event?

We have 10% of our collectors who have URs and "power builds" and 1% who have the artifacts and relics/legendaries.

So this argument here is to support more difficulty for a vast minority of players?

But here's the kicker, what % of TD's operating income comes from that 10% of players? I would guess certain individuals are probably up to 5-15% all by themselves. And if you were in Jeff's shoes who are you going to cater to? You want to make *everybody* happy but do you really care that 10% of people who come to TD go away angry because they tried an *INSANE* difficulty and were not prepared? Or do you cater to the higher % who "pay the bills" and make TD a reality?

It's really not an easy situation and I already know what has been done in the past.

So rather than go on about it at length, face the reality of the situation. If you were Jeff, what would YOU DO to encourage new players, help sperad the awesomeness that is TD, while also making your "Payer"base happy?

Also what defines a "Happy Player?"?

Is that a new player who went through and made it to the last room to die with their 10 pack?

Is that a mid level 10%er who went through on hardcore or normal and beat the last boss?

Is that an artifact/legendary owner who went through and cake walked everything and hit on 2?

Is that an artifact/legendary owner who bought out an entire run, got all the draws regardless of the system and then took home the treasure box?

I suppose it all depends on who you ask... but we should keep these things in mind when making these suggestions.

Like everything in life, you'll get different answers from different people. There are players whose focus are the puzzles and the sense of accomplishment from solving those. There are players who hate the puzzles but an epic battle gets their juices flowing. To a point, we already have the ability to make a combat more challenging just by not using the crazy overpowered equipment we bought. I know, who wants to have spent money and not use the shiny tokens, but we do to some extent control our difficulty through our equipping of our character. That's why I like Raven's idea so much. That allows us to customize the difficulty of the dungeon to match how kitted we are. It's like going to a Thai restaurant and deciding if you want mild, medium, hot, or THAI HOT!!!!

Yes, it's probably the crazy 80/20 rule where 80% of Jeff's profits come from 20% of the players (I don't know the real numbers), but we have to remember that the big buyers of tomorrow are the little fish in the pond today.

Raven wrote:

Kaledor wrote: I really don't see why Hardcore is the same XP as Nightmare when it's easier to survive. I would do 1000 Normal, 1500 Hardcore, and 2000 Nightmare, if added a harder level in the mix it is 2500.

The answer is that - in a tabletop game - XP is what lets players unlock new and different dungeons, bigger monsters, new character powers, and access to more powerful items.

In True Dungeon, we can't just build another Dungeon to accommodate a new "level" of player. We can't swap out monsters with different costumed NPCs because a powerful party is coming into the room. We can't re-make character cards and let players level up to 10th without completely screwing up the balance of the game for the new players. And we can't use XP as the door to powerful treasure because that's what drives token sales.

So what TD has done, is to tie XP to the player, instead of the character. You play more True Dungeon, you can get some cool rewards. But they don't scale directly to the level of the dungeon.

TD did, at one point, try to open up opportunities for people to get more XP. They made the XP between dungeons stack. So if you played on Normal, and then played on Hardcore, you could get (say) 1000 XP PLUS 2000 XP = 3000XP. This was done to let newer players "catch up" to the more experienced ones.

It did not work out as planned. What happened was that veterans who were happier playing on HardCore bought a lot of normal runs just for the XP. Regular players and new players complained that they couldn't even get tickets to the event anymore... or that they could only get a single run... because everything else was full. Vets played multiple versions of the same dungeon just for the XP and pulled way ahead of the new players, actually increasing the XP gap, and making a lot of people unhappy.

So TD capped the XP at Hardcore level.

This was done to reduce the increasing XP gap; to provide less incentive for people to buy multiple runs just for XP; and to put the focus of the game on fun - and/or the buying of tokens which actually profits True Dungeon - rather than accumulating experience which was not directly tied to any in-game advancement.

So, a direct answer to your question, "Why is Hardcore the same XP as Nightmare when its easier to survive?" is because we all run through the same dungeon, and it's tokens (not XP) which make the difference both in difficulty, and in TD's overall profit.

Very well said.

When it comes to why wouldn't Nightmare+10 add more experience than Nightmare+0. Simple. The pluses are there to define what you consider "Nightmare". That's why the reward should be the same. We've already been down the XP reward road before. XP is a motivator for players, even though it has no in game value. People don't want to fall behind.

Kaledor wrote:

George wrote:

Druegar wrote:

Kaledor wrote: (they really hated monster bits this year)

Would you mind elaborating on that please?

I hated the scarcity of monster bits. Out of 40ish tokens for 3 runs I only got 6 monster bits.

We had a group of almost ALL new players, each pulled 3 tokens... each pulled 1 - 3 monster bits. A few groups the new players pulled 3 monster bits each. They were very disappointed.

A few were returning from last year and asked which box is not the trophy box. So was some disappointed players that got monster bits and nothing to do with them. I did direct them to traders out front. /shrugs

I don't know if my staff were referring to your group, but I was told:

A group of people came to our shop with monster bits. Our price guide says we give this many rolls or pulls for the bits. So my staff traded the bits for die rolls (the people weren't interested in more pulls!) They rolled the die and got a spread of commons, uncommons are a few rares. One person won a Boots of the Marauder? My staff implied that the people had fun with rolling dice and the excitement of the game.

If true, then this example shows how the secondary market can turn a frown, upside down? And maybe, have some players come back. I know my shop and staff will be back in 2015.