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TOPIC: my experience... not good

Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #97

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bpsymington wrote: Perhaps in the future there could be more leniency with that rule, at least for normal level, which is more likely to have the newer players. A team of purped out vets with Charms of Avarice won't miss one stamp very much, but if all you could possibly get is three, missing one is a big deal.


I haven't been one of the New players for a long time, but yeah, I really feel for them. Casual players, too. They don't have the advantage of looking over the year's token collection, designing cool builds, or (usually) knowing anyone in their group before they meet in the Coaching room. If this is their one chance to play the dungeon per year, then the loss of a single treasure token is very significant for them.

If I had to design a rule regarding "strikes" for getting a treasure stamp, I'd say :

Normal mode: Keep the old system. No strikes, no penalties. Be generous with treasure.

Hardcore: 3 strikes. Make sure the party *knows* (after the first strike) that their treasure is at risk.

Nightmare: No strikes. Let's face it, the majority of Nightmare players are already equipped with Treasure Enhancers. Many have gone through the dungeon and already know the answers. If they re playing on Nightmare mode, they should know the risks.
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Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #98

Brad Mortensen wrote:

balthasar wrote: I would say that if ten people walked across the lava using the boots, the group didn't solve a puzzle.


If the puzzle was "get to the other side," then yes, they did.
If the puzzle was "decode the stones," then no, they didn't.

But wearing boots that help in one (maybe two) rooms out of seven puts the party at a disadvantage in the rest of the rooms, considering there are much better choices.


Agreed on the trade off/disadvantage.

And while we're discussing the matter, I think it's worth keeping in mind that there is a spectrum of outcomes possible;

Sure, if 10 people use lava boots then they bypassed the puzzle and didn't solve it.

But what about 1? 2? 3? 4? If 6-9 of the group pass the puzzle with the correct solution, is it so important that the execution be flawless, or that they figured it out and had a 'safety net' for some of the members?

As I've noted a few times, it seems at odds to provide a tool but punish use of that tool. Especially for the groups where damage was being applied, that seems like the worst of both worlds.

Of course, on normal I'm not entirely convinced that it's really all that necessary to have 'failures until treasure is lost', but I say that as a new player who missed out on a stamp simply due to trial and error (and that was how we found out about the limit).

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Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #99

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I'm sure this will be discussed by coordinators, directors, and TPTB before next year.
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Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #100

Another thread that's gone all around the houses.

I'm curious whether the person who started is feeling any better about TD in general after all these pages of discussion.

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Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #101

bpsymington wrote: I'm sure this will be discussed by coordinators, directors, and TPTB before next year.


That is great! I did see that there was some discussion about the lava puzzle on the DM forums prior to GenCon, but obviously we need more of that beforehand. Some of the rooms had zero discussion by DMs before GenCon, it might be interesting to compare the rooms players complained about the most with the number of posts on the DM forum. Perhaps the rooms with the least or the most discussion had the most discussion and that could be a warning sign of which room(s) the AC should dig into a bit more.
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Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #102

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Kirk Bauer wrote:

bpsymington wrote: I'm sure this will be discussed by coordinators, directors, and TPTB before next year.


That is great! I did see that there was some discussion about the lava puzzle on the DM forums prior to GenCon, but obviously we need more of that beforehand. Some of the rooms had zero discussion by DMs before GenCon, it might be interesting to compare the rooms players complained about the most with the number of posts on the DM forum. Perhaps the rooms with the least or the most discussion had the most discussion and that could be a warning sign of which room(s) the AC should dig into a bit more.


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Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #103

My group has morphed some over the years, but we starting doing this the second year True Dungeon was at GenCon. We love TD, it's one of the highlights of our con.

We went through the Sable Gauntlet on normal combat this year and, frankly, our experience was so bad that complaining about it was our largest topic of conversation the entire weekend.

If I thought any of it was the GMs' or NPCs' faults, I would certainly have reported it to the desk. But it seemed to go deeper than that, so I waited for the riddle reveal.

Good Stuff:
The new entry area was rad. Glowing mushrooms? Giant spiders? Sold.

The GMs we had enough time to talk to were very understanding about our frustration and really tried to put their best foot forward.

We screwed up the spider/mummy puzzle room, but it was a good idea.

Other Stuff:
The decorations and enemies within the Sable Gauntlet didn't live up to expectations set by the entry area or previous years.

We have decent-but-not-great tokens (plenty of reds, only a few purples), but didn't feel that they mattered at all. The vast majority of the damage we took was unavoidable in one flavor or another. And round-by-round unavoidable damage actively discouraged us from finishing combats in a timely manner.

The difficulty was completely out of whack for normal. This and the previous issue combined to make any action seem futile. I was glad when I died in the 7th room because I had an excuse to no longer participate in my favorite activity at GenCon.

In Closing:
We technically did better this year than the dragon year, with two players getting pushed out of the last room. But it was a painful two hours. Three of our players weren't able to make it and I honestly envy them, because they're still excited about True Dungeon.

Sorry to be the bearer of extreme grumpiness. I've loved True Dungeon for years and I appreciate all you do. But this year has soured me to TD and, if it's representative of TD going forward, I'll happily sit it out.

Cheers!
Landon

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Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #104

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I'm really sorry to hear about your frustrations, Landon. I know if probably doesn't help at this stage, but there were a large number of people who came forward with complaints about the unavoidability of certain types of damage, and how their tokens seemed to be pointless.

A lot of discussion has been going on (you can find pages and pages of it, starting right after the Con) and it sounds like people have put forward some really good arguments, and that the Powers That Be are taking them seriously.

I'm glad to hear your DMs and NPCs were good - that has been a problem in the past, and has definitely been improving steadily (although it's got a ways to go, too, based on some people's experiences.)

I really hope you'll give the game another shot, because I'm optimistic that this is not what TD will be like going forward.
People like you, and many others who love the game, have taken the time to provide feedback, and that will make a difference going forward.

Thank you for caring enough about the game to take the time to share your experience.
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Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #105

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Landon Winkler wrote: My group has morphed some over the years, but we starting doing this the second year True Dungeon was at GenCon. We love TD, it's one of the highlights of our con.

We went through the Sable Gauntlet on normal combat this year and, frankly, our experience was so bad that complaining about it was our largest topic of conversation the entire weekend.

If I thought any of it was the GMs' or NPCs' faults, I would certainly have reported it to the desk. But it seemed to go deeper than that, so I waited for the riddle reveal.

Good Stuff:
The new entry area was rad. Glowing mushrooms? Giant spiders? Sold.

The GMs we had enough time to talk to were very understanding about our frustration and really tried to put their best foot forward.

We screwed up the spider/mummy puzzle room, but it was a good idea.

Other Stuff:
The decorations and enemies within the Sable Gauntlet didn't live up to expectations set by the entry area or previous years.

We have decent-but-not-great tokens (plenty of reds, only a few purples), but didn't feel that they mattered at all. The vast majority of the damage we took was unavoidable in one flavor or another. And round-by-round unavoidable damage actively discouraged us from finishing combats in a timely manner.

The difficulty was completely out of whack for normal. This and the previous issue combined to make any action seem futile. I was glad when I died in the 7th room because I had an excuse to no longer participate in my favorite activity at GenCon.

In Closing:
We technically did better this year than the dragon year, with two players getting pushed out of the last room. But it was a painful two hours. Three of our players weren't able to make it and I honestly envy them, because they're still excited about True Dungeon.

Sorry to be the bearer of extreme grumpiness. I've loved True Dungeon for years and I appreciate all you do. But this year has soured me to TD and, if it's representative of TD going forward, I'll happily sit it out.

Cheers!
Landon


I'll agree that some of the monsters weren't as cool as previous years. But as to the rest of your post it just comes across as whiny.

There's a reason the party characters have HPs. Death is a possibility. Just because our school and sports systems over the years have given everyone trophies just for showing up doesn't mean TD should follow suit. I still think it's the dumbest thing that athletes and students who study/train have to sit back and watch the lazy get the same rewards they do.

I've been playing TD since its 3rd year. Back then I didn't have the money to run multiple times. And back then I died 2-3 times. Oh well. I didn't whine and cry about it. I knew going in... ya know because I saw HP were on my character card... death was a possibility.

If you don't like dying or unavoidable damage (which is nothing new and has been around in one form or another since I've been playing) then play on Non-Lethal mode.

If you leave for good that's okay, too. I'd recommend Dungeons & Dragons or MtG at GenCon as a substitute, but you can die there, too. And the cutthroat players of MtG will not please you.
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Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #106

Landon Winkler wrote: The difficulty was completely out of whack for normal. This and the previous issue combined to make any action seem futile. I was glad when I died in the 7th room because I had an excuse to no longer participate in my favorite activity at GenCon.

Landon, may I ask what difficulty you played on?

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Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #107

Ro-gan wrote: I'll agree that some of the monsters weren't as cool as previous years. But as to the rest of your post it just comes across as whiny.

There's a reason the party characters have HPs. Death is a possibility. Just because our school and sports systems over the years have given everyone trophies just for showing up doesn't mean TD should follow suit. I still think it's the dumbest thing that athletes and students who study/train have to sit back and watch the lazy get the same rewards they do.

I've been playing TD since its 3rd year. Back then I didn't have the money to run multiple times. And back then I died 2-3 times. Oh well. I didn't whine and cry about it. I knew going in... ya know because I saw HP were on my character card... death was a possibility.

If you don't like dying or unavoidable damage (which is nothing new and has been around in one form or another since I've been playing) then play on Non-Lethal mode.

If you leave for good that's okay, too. I'd recommend Dungeons & Dragons or MtG at GenCon as a substitute, but you can die there, too. And the cutthroat players of MtG will not please you.


We seem to have dramatically different take aways from his post.

Unavoidable damage is an entirely valid complaint, in my eyes; if damage prevention is going to be on tokens, and then damage is untyped or typed in a form that cannot be prevented, what is the point of using the tokens? If TD doesn't want to engage in an arms race with players for damage types, stop giving out damage resistance items, or avoid doing so in an escalating fashion.

The issue with tokens being partially or entirely useless is a very valid consideration when people are spending hundreds and even thousands of dollars on them (on top of potentially spending hundreds of dollars to play the game itself). I may be new, but I'm no stranger to game mechanics, especially various flavours of D&D. If I give my players damage resistance itmes and then feel the need to use a type I know they don't have, those resistances are at best reduced in utility, and at worst actively detrimental (in that another token/item could be used in its place to provide a benefit they're not getting otherwise).

This discussion has been had (at length) regarding the lava walking boots alone, but they are merely an aspect of this very problem; why give tokens that are going to be circumvented in the dungeons? Why should players spend money on them if they're not going to have actual uses in the game (or be penalized for their use)? I empathize with trying to build dungeons that challenge veteran players without utterly stomping newer players (like myself), but 'sorry it's untyped' feels, to me, like it should be attached to Push damage alone. Having it as a mechanic elsewhere strikes me as a bad idea, and while it must be difficult to keep pace with the hundreds or thousands(?) of tokens that now exist, that's an aspect of the business model that's on TD to manage.

Players shouldn't feel that the tokens they bought or traded or were lucky enough to draw are being ignored.

As for dying, from my read, it wasn't 'omg I died waaah', but 'I'm having so little fun at my favourite Gencon activity that I was relieved when I died at the end', and that's a hell of a thing to say.

Telling him to go play D&D or Magic isn't remotely constructive; he doesn't want to not die (how strangely phrased), he wants to have fun playing, and wasn't.

I didn't play the Sable gauntlet, so perhaps there are aspects I'm unaware of, but let's recognize that constructive criticism can be leveled without taking it personally, or resorting to personal snipes.

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Last edit: by Forar.

Re: my experience... not good 8 years 7 months ago #108

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Forar wrote:
This discussion has been had (at length) regarding the lava walking boots alone, but they are merely an aspect of this very problem; why give tokens that are going to be circumvented in the dungeons? Why should players spend money on them if they're not going to have actual uses in the game? I empathize with trying to build dungeons that challenge veteran players without utterly stomping newer players (like myself), but 'sorry it's untyped' feels, to me, like it should be attached to Push damage alone. Having it as a mechanic elsewhere strikes me as a bad idea, and while it must be difficult to keep pace with the hundreds or thousands(?) of tokens that now exist, that's an aspect of the business model that's on TD to manage.

Players shouldn't feel that the tokens they bought or traded or were lucky enough to draw are being ignored.


I think part of the problem might stem from the amount of time/behind the scenes iteration between token design and the actual dungeon. It often seems like Jeff may have certain plans at design (I suspect a flash of bright light might have been an idea this past year. But for whatever reason that didn't/couldn't happen so the tokens that dealt with it felt useless).

Now that said I definitely think there is room for improvement, maybe the flash could have come at the start of sable and everyone caught unaware was bound up while those with protection could have operated in the stick room freely for example. In any case I think its important from a design perspective to make sure that flavorful tokens like that get used, even if its just a nod to their existence.

Whats that your in the immune to normal spiders cloak and you got a spider necklace in the grub room, ok well your spider either falls off, or you cant be poisoned by it. Or maybe during the fight with the drow and the egg sacks the first few explosions could have been normal spiders, then when she saw they didn't work on everyone she upgraded to phase spiders.

On the underdark side it would have been nice if the Salamanders heat aura could have been mitigated by fire damage reductions etc.

It doesn't have to be much, as the under water rules taught us in 2011 if the environmental rules go to far they will just be ignored but it needs to be something.

TL;DR if your going to give out fire resist tokens make sure you throw in token fire to resist even if its not as grand as the original plan.
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