TOPIC: Ghosting proposal for smaller conventions

OR just say no ghosting and let those that want to purchase treasure pulls purchase a ticket for treasure pulls but limit the tickets to 20 per person, i.e., two runs.

Kaledor wrote: OR just say no ghosting and let those that want to purchase treasure pulls purchase a ticket for treasure pulls but limit the tickets to 20 per person, i.e., two runs.

That doesn't solve the problem of no-shows.

This topic is so frustrating

@Kirk re: bunnies - Yes, we are in a hole. I just think the first thing to do is stop digging.

OK So here's the Crazy guy out of the box thinking.
GenCon - keep ghosting rules the same as far as treasure and all of that. Sell 5 additional Ghost ONLY spots per run. Keep the actual run tickets for real people. In essence, there could be 10 people and 5 ghosts per run.
TD gets the revenue for 15 tickets while allowing more spots for actual people to get their tickets. I have been playing for quite a while and every year is a struggle to get tickets. There were even several years in which my entire group got shut out and had to stand by with Generics hoping to get in on runs.

Other Cons - I like Kirk's idea of limiting the tokens to the same approximate value so 10 max token pulls. Same exact scenario with ghosting tickets.

The only problem I see is newbies purchasing Ghost tickets because they didn't read the event description. The solution (albeit not a great one is to have them wait for the next available run with open slots)

Thoughts??

They could wait hours for a spot.

Harlax wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Hawk Fingle wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote:

Hawk Fingle wrote: First year at Origins is hardly enough data to suggest opening up ghosting rules.

I thought the entire point of having other con options was to make it more available to new players in different markets, who maybe can't afford the trip to Gen Con. Now you want to take away that option before it has had a chance to grow?

It may take three or four years for TD to sell out at the smaller conventions as the markets adjust. Word of mouth travels. People remember the cool times they had playing the year before, and start looping their friends into it. While they are cheaper than Gen Con runs, they are still likely the highest priced event at these other cons, and the usual attending crowd has to learn whether or not it is worth their investment. The communities at these cons are only in their initial growth stages. Give them time, for the love of Pete.

I wouldn't start calling for changes to ghosting rules at the other cons until after they see five years of activity. By then there should be enough trending data to suggest if TD needs to fill out runs with players who have deep pockets.

I guess I don't understand the logic. You are saying that we should continue to run smaller conventions with unsold tickets for a few years in the hope that eventually those tickets will fill up with real players, all the while losing revenue for True Dungeon.

While simultaneously allowing unlimited ghosting at GenCon when tickets are guaranteed to sell out and almost certainly every ghost slot would have been taken by an actual player?

I am saying sacrifice a little short term gain for the long term goal.

If Ghosting rules change, heavy treasure investors buy up all the runs, and we're back to the problem we had at Gen Con prior to this year with whole runs going to a handful of players and a lot of new players being shut out of the process.

It's about market growth. TD stands to make a lot more in the long run by keeping runs new player friendly for now. New communities need the room to grow and the pleasant feeling of there being runs available instead of racing a vet to get one spot or being completely out of luck.

I expect next year's Gen Con will not be as crazy as this year was. It was the 50th con, TD saw Patrick Rothfuss' fans wanting to see the world brought to life, plus the usual Gen Con TD community which has had 15 years to grow into what it is.

I actually think GENCON will be just as crazy next year. The attendance numbers for sellout weren't much higher than last year, I'll bet we hit those numbers again. Maybe even sooner.

I'll certainly be encouraging my group to buy badges on day 1.

Me too! I'm not risking a sellout!

I feel like many of the proposed solutions are completely missing the point. They are enabling treasure farming ghosts while doing nothing to help the missing player/small group ghosts. This is exactly the opposite of what i think should happen.
Unless jeff just wants to start selling treasure pulls, farming should not be accommodated. This is why ghosts had to be banned at smaller cons, it was too profitable to resist (i believe many of the farming players only bought out runs that were unsold at time of launch, but it became proof of concept that required action before it was a problem). Honestly, my opinion is 'screw treasure farmers', but i also want to protect the honest players from getting screwed over (eating the cost of a ticket because you are short a player and want tobrun nightmare is bad enough, at least let that person recover a little with treasure for that ticket)...but how do you tell the difference when someone says their 2 friends didnt show? It needs to be a codified rules, unless you really want an AC to show up and make the call for EVERY ghost.

I think the loot cap on ghosts is a decent suggestion. It allows players to get something for that extra ticket (whether someone didnt show or they wanted to run a small party), but doesnt let farming be profitable at the smaller cons. Also, i think it should be implemented at gencon too. This would actually hurt me a little as i have been doing a 5-person run the past few years and will continue to do so if possible...although, if the loot cap was across all cons, i might prefer to do that at a smaller con if i can arrange with others.

Sell limited numbers. Limit X per customer and punch their badge.

It's no more gambling than buying packs of MTG cards, or 10-packs hoping for a 00.

Increased ticket sales (which is what the bags kind of are) would probably make up for a lot of token sales. People would still buy them because they need them when they play actually play.

This is not at you Picc: Maybe I'm just grouchy, but wtf changed? We just went through all this less than a year ago, and came to a fine compromise. We could just paste a link to that thread here and save everyone a lot of time. I don't think anyone has changed positions or come up with anything new (me included.) After less than a season, only two conventions and one far from a sellout, and we're starting all over?

How many ghosts were there at GenCon anyway? The way some people are freaking out you'd think we were back in the days of multiple solo runs.

We're arguing about how to fix something that I don't think anyone is even sure is broken

Brad Mortensen wrote:

jedibcg wrote: They could wait hours for a spot.

True.

Don't sell ghost tickets. You could just sell a limited number of little bags of treasure chips. Or, for that matter, bags of 20 loot from the mix. Don't give GenCon a cut of what is essentially a token sale.

That would basically solve the ghost problem.

However I'm not sure if it would actually increase cash flow for Jeff. If someone could just buy a 20 bag of loot I'm sure lots of people would do that directly rather then buying treasure enhancers (which I imagine make up a large part of the UR pyps each year). We might also be crossing into gambling legislation depending on the state if we started directly selling what amounts to a chance at random prizes with significant cash values.

There would also be lots of complaining if they ran out of 50 bags early because someone bought them all.

kurtreznor wrote: I feel like many of the proposed solutions are completely missing the point. They are enabling treasure farming ghosts while doing nothing to help the missing player/small group ghosts. This is exactly the opposite of what i think should happen.
Unless jeff just wants to start selling treasure pulls, farming should not be accommodated. This is why ghosts had to be banned at smaller cons, it was too profitable to resist (i believe many of the farming players only bought out runs that were unsold at time of launch, but it became proof of concept that required action before it was a problem). Honestly, my opinion is 'screw treasure farmers', but i also want to protect the honest players from getting screwed over (eating the cost of a ticket because you are short a player and want tobrun nightmare is bad enough, at least let that person recover a little with treasure for that ticket)...but how do you tell the difference when someone says their 2 friends didnt show? It needs to be a codified rules, unless you really want an AC to show up and make the call for EVERY ghost.

I think the loot cap on ghosts is a decent suggestion. It allows players to get something for that extra ticket (whether someone didnt show or they wanted to run a small party), but doesnt let farming be profitable at the smaller cons. Also, i think it should be implemented at gencon too. This would actually hurt me a little as i have been doing a 5-person run the past few years and will continue to do so if possible...although, if the loot cap was across all cons, i might prefer to do that at a smaller con if i can arrange with others.

I'm not sure I see a way to allow someone whose friend didn't show to ghost his spot for loot, but not allow treasure farming. I don't see how you could tell the difference. Someone who is treasure farming could easily just say that their friends didn't show.

Brad Mortensen wrote:

jedibcg wrote: They could wait hours for a spot.

True.

Don't sell ghost tickets. You could just sell a limited number of little bags of treasure chips. Or, for that matter, bags of 20 loot from the mix. Don't give GenCon a cut of what is essentially a token sale.

This option has been brought up many times before, and Jeff has never seemed interested in it. I suspect he'd like to keep the only way to get treasure box loot to be treasure chips from runs (or token purchase bonuses) be used for Treasure Box pulls.

I think trying to sell a limited number of bags of treasure bag loot is a no-win scenario anyways for True Dungeon. If there is profit potential in it, I actually expect that there will be people showing up with hundreds or even thousands of dollars to spend on them. They'd probably sell out really quickly, and just make everyone that didn't get as many of them as they wanted angry. And maybe it would cut down on ticket sales, it's hard to tell how many people are buying tickets in part to get the treasure box loot.

Mike Steele wrote: people are buying tickets in part to get the treasure box loot.

Then why are we punishing it, if those tickets wouldn't be sold anyway?

Somehow my post #43 is out of order

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: people are buying tickets in part to get the treasure box loot.

Then why are we punishing it, if those tickets wouldn't be sold anyway?

Somehow my post #43 is out of order

Brad, that is a bit deceptive to quote the sentence fragment without including "It's hard to tell how many..." at the start of it, which gives it a very different meaning. I don't know how many people are buying tickets in part to get treasure box loot.

I think the point that was made earlier, is that it's hard to know whether empty slots in a run are genuine, or whether someone is gaming the system. Unfortunately, it's been demonstrated that there are people that will game the True Dungeon system if they can make a profit and get away with it. Even if you wanted to let people grab empty tickets for ghosting, there's the possibility someone coordinated buying and then returning those tickets too late for them to be filled in order to create the empty slots.