TOPIC: Ghosting proposal for smaller conventions

Mike Steele wrote:

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.

but this is why I like the loot cap for ghosts: the people ghosting for profit simply wont do it any more because they wont make money on it, but the people who genuinely had a last-minute issue or some non-profit motive like running 5-person wont be completely shafted, they at least get some of the treasure to soften the blow of the ticket price. it is a solution that works around having to tell the difference.

Special token purchase at TD store for price of con ticket, can purchase up to four per day per con:

Figurine of Power: Ghost

1/dungeon, if less than 10 players, you may fill one empty spot with one Ghost player. Surrender to Coach at beginning of dungeon.

Since you can't equip the same token twice and ghosts can't have figurines, this would present a mechanic in the game that opens the possibility for ghosting without affecting con ticket sales, while still accruing revenue for TD. Then you don't need any con ghosting rules at all. Got an empty spot? Got a token? Turn it in, have fun.

5-person runs can still benefit, missing player spots can be filled, provides a limit on ghosting at every con, token recycles to limit print costs, still allows for waitlisting, and if you really want to greed it up you're paying the ticket price twice: once for the ticket, once for the token.

Seems to address everyone's issues in a tidy bit of compromise. Start it at Gen Con, then hold off on accepting them at the smaller cons for a few years. Bada boom, bada bing, TD gets money and runs get a couple ghosts if spots are available.

But yeah. Still think the rules as they are now are fine for the next so many years as the communities at the smaller cons grow.

@Mike - I can't always highlight exactly what I want on my phone. Wasn't trying to deceive, just tired of fighting my phone. I'll stop quoting you at all. I encourage everyone to read Mike's entire post.

But you make my point. We don't know. So why are we trying to fix it? I'll ask again- how many ghosts were there at GenCon? We know how many at Origins.

And why are we going through this same debate so soon? Based on two aberrant cons? (TDs first Origins and Gencon's 50th)

@Kurt - I'm sorry but I find your logic as compelling as saying we should send every adult to prison for a year. We might as well punish everybody, because some of them are guilty, and it's only one year out of seventy so the innocent just have to suck it up, because... why again? I think calling it a solution is overly generous.

Disclosure - in my entire life, I have ghosted one ticket total. It wasn't planned, it was because of a last-minute cancellation.

Brad Mortensen wrote: @Mike - I can't always highlight exactly what I want on my phone. Wasn't trying to deceive, just tired of fighting my phone. I'll stop quoting you at all. I encourage everyone to read Mike's entire post.

But you make my point. We don't know. So why are we trying to fix it? I'll ask again- how many ghosts were there at GenCon? We know how many at Origins.

And why are we going through this same debate so soon? Based on two aberrant cons? (TDs first Origins and Gencon's 50th)

@Kurt - I'm sorry but I find your logic as compelling as saying we should send every adult to prison for a year. We might as well punish everybody, because some of them are guilty, and it's only one year out of seventy so the innocent just have to suck it up, because... why again? I think calling it a solution is overly generous.

Disclosure - in my entire life, I have ghosted one ticket total. It wasn't planned, it was because of a last-minute cancellation.

That false equivalence is so egregious that i feel there is a miscommunication: the loot cap suggested is meant for ghosts ONLY, no other players affected.

As for why we are having the discussion again; because we want things to be better.

kurtreznor wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: @Mike - I can't always highlight exactly what I want on my phone. Wasn't trying to deceive, just tired of fighting my phone. I'll stop quoting you at all. I encourage everyone to read Mike's entire post.

But you make my point. We don't know. So why are we trying to fix it? I'll ask again- how many ghosts were there at GenCon? We know how many at Origins.

And why are we going through this same debate so soon? Based on two aberrant cons? (TDs first Origins and Gencon's 50th)

@Kurt - I'm sorry but I find your logic as compelling as saying we should send every adult to prison for a year. We might as well punish everybody, because some of them are guilty, and it's only one year out of seventy so the innocent just have to suck it up, because... why again? I think calling it a solution is overly generous.

Disclosure - in my entire life, I have ghosted one ticket total. It wasn't planned, it was because of a last-minute cancellation.

That false equivalence is so egregious that i feel there is a miscommunication: the loot cap suggested is meant for ghosts ONLY, no other players affected.

As for why we are having the discussion again; because we want things to be better.

There was a two or so hour window at GHC last year where the coaches had nothing to do because runs were empty or only had one player whom we held back to combine with a later run with more players. Some runs were only filled because some people bought out runs to ghost.

I'm hoping things will be better this year. Right now it's looking thin, but regular event registration is not open yet.

Was the buying out of empty runs at the last minute and the resulting revenue a good thing for TD? Only Jeff can decide that.

How feasible do you guys think it would be to have a registet of ghosts on which we ciuld record how often someone was ghosting. Hopefully then we could set a cap to the number of times you could ghost.

We could also try doing it based on exception. Officially ghosts get no treasure, but you can adk for an exception if someone doesnt show up or whatever then the AC writes your names down. If you ask for more exceptions than is propper your told no.

Not sure hoe feasible these are, just brainstorming.

Would this work?

No ghosting at smaller conventions.

At the end of the day, offer up any unsold tickets, limit 10, at full price to anyone who wants them to turn in with however many TEs they have for each ticket.

TD only gets paid for tickets sold anyway.

This leaves unsold spots open for anyone to pick up during the day and doesn't leave any money on the table at the end of the day.

Thoughts?

kurtreznor wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: @Mike - I can't always highlight exactly what I want on my phone. Wasn't trying to deceive, just tired of fighting my phone. I'll stop quoting you at all. I encourage everyone to read Mike's entire post.

But you make my point. We don't know. So why are we trying to fix it? I'll ask again- how many ghosts were there at GenCon? We know how many at Origins.

And why are we going through this same debate so soon? Based on two aberrant cons? (TDs first Origins and Gencon's 50th)

@Kurt - I'm sorry but I find your logic as compelling as saying we should send every adult to prison for a year. We might as well punish everybody, because some of them are guilty, and it's only one year out of seventy so the innocent just have to suck it up, because... why again? I think calling it a solution is overly generous.

Disclosure - in my entire life, I have ghosted one ticket total. It wasn't planned, it was because of a last-minute cancellation.

That false equivalence is so egregious that i feel there is a miscommunication: the loot cap suggested is meant for ghosts ONLY, no other players affected.

As for why we are having the discussion again; because we want things to be better.

You're ignoring the fact that you cannot affect a "ghost" without affecting an actual human being.

And I agree; treating a person who is stuck with a ticket because of circumstances beyond their control as though they are a greedy farmer is egregious.

In our country, we usually bend over backwards to ensure we don't punish the innocent, to the extent that we often let the known guilty walk. A loot cap on ALL ghosts is the opposite of that.

I'm all for making things better. IMO, this doesn't. It makes things worse for players who get stiffed.

So what data do we have that things were "bad"? We just had a change limiting ghosts to five per party. How many ghosts did we have this year vs last? How many were "innocent" vs intentionally farmed? How did the number of solo and dual runs compare this year vs last?

I know tickets sold out fast, but was it because of newbies or farmers? (I introduced nine newbies to the game myself.) But GenCon itself sold out for the first time in history. We had a lot of players who tried TD because of the Rothfuss connection. How many? And how many will be back in non-Rothfuss 2018.

Bigger question: now that people are confident that GHC and Origins are a thing, how will that affect people's buying behavior. How many will shift their runs from Indy to one or both? (Hint: me. We plan to run maybe once at GenCon in 2018, and do the rest in Columbus. I'm not the only one, right?)

These are not idle questions. They're crucial in understanding why this year sold out so fast, and whether it'll be the same next year, and how to address it, if at all.

Haphazardly changing the ghost rules again without these answers is just tinkering. My opinion is it will have a very low chance of making things "better," whatever that means, and is guaranteed to make things worse for certain players.

Some municipalities have what amounts to an accident tax. If you have a wreck, you get a bill for cleaning up the street, even if you're not at fault. That's what a ghost loot cap does.

For GENCON, if I were in charge, I'd look at the quick sellout and know that any tickets that went for ghosting would have sold to actual people if the tickets hadn't been bought for ghosts. And to me, having actual people on the runs, with the chance of expanding the player base, would be more valuable to True Dungeon long term, so I'd make GENCON consistent with the smaller conventions and ban ghosting for loot.

I would still offer compensation for a limited number of Ghost spots per run, maybe along the lines of token packs. That would give people something back for their ticket price if someone didn't show up, but wouldn't promote token farming.

Let's keep in mind there are three reasons people ghost:

1) For the loot
2) Player is missing
3) Challenge runs

I think it is a bad idea to screw #2 and #3 just because of #1. Just make ghosting not very lucrative from a treasure perspective. Allowing people to buy unsold tickets for the treasure at the last minute still screws #2 and #3 and actually helps #1 out. I think that's the opposite direction we should be going.

Back to my original proposal: we need a ghosting policy that allows #2 and #3 without being so lucrative as to attract #1. I think that's as simple as giving *some* loot for ghosts but not too much.

I'd be fine with a policy of "No ghosting at GenCon. At other conventions ghosts may not receive more than 10 treasure draws". Or perhaps "Only one ghost per run at GenCon; for other conventions there is no limit on the number of ghosts, however each ghost may only receive 10 treasure draws".

For me, I really enjoy challenge runs (e.g. 2-man or 3-man run), or even more than that, I really enjoy the smaller group of a 5-man run. Today the only way to do that is to take up a slot at GenCon that somebody else could have actually used. Meanwhile there are entire empty runs at smaller conventions where we can't ghost. It just makes no sense to me. With my proposed policy, I would save my challenge runs for everywhere else and leave all of the GenCon tickets for real players. If somebody doesn't show for my 10-man organized runs (as happened this year) then at least I can ghost one of them.

Mike Steele wrote: For GENCON, if I were in charge, I'd look at the quick sellout and know that any tickets that went for ghosting would have sold to actual people if the tickets hadn't been bought for ghosts. And to me, having actual people on the runs, with the chance of expanding the player base, would be more valuable to True Dungeon long term, so I'd make GENCON consistent with the smaller conventions and ban ghosting for loot.

I would still offer compensation for a limited number of Ghost spots per run, maybe along the lines of token packs. That would give people something back for their ticket price if someone didn't show up, but wouldn't promote token farming.

You have an error in your analysis though. You don't know how many of those tickets were ghosted contributing to it selling out so fast. If half the tickets were actually ghosts(which no I don't believe it was anywhere near that number) then making no ghost could create too many tickets. I am not disagreeing with your final result (that there shouldn't be ghosting for loot) or agreeing with it. Just pointing out the error in your logic because we don't have the data to know how much ghosting there was (though I imagine it was very minor and you are probably correct ).

Honestly I think the ghosting issue at Gencon might be slightly overblown. I was a full time coach again this year and I saw exactly 2 party cards with ghosts on them (one group was doing a double down, the other had 2 friends who didn't show up), and honestly thats not significantly reduced from last year. I also coached at GHC last year and there was lots of runs that were just unsold. Maybe I missed seeing how bad it was at Origins but from my perspective it seems like were making a mountain out of a mole hill. Just my two cents.