TOPIC: Ghosting proposal for smaller conventions

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote: And how many ghosts was that, Mike? We cut the number of ghosts per party from nine to five, and yet we sold out hella fast. How did that happen if ghosts were the problem?

And how much will next year's demand drop due to GenCon 51, satellite cons, and Rothfuss-less-ness of the adventures?

Was 2017 a perfect storm one-off, or a trend?

And how would such a draconian policy affect ticket sales? Are people going to risk buying as many no-refund tickets or hope for wait list and all the chaos that ensues?

In short, is this poorly-defined problem going to go away on its own?

I don't know. That's why I ask. Neither do you. You're assuming a problem, assuming a cause, assuming a trend, and assuming a solution without considering, or at least minimizing the consequences for innocents.

I'm opposed to any restrictions or penalties on ghosts that don't equally affect humans, mercenaries, and zombies (people who walk through the adventure while their ZombieMaster buys their ticket and keeps all their loot). (Let's not re-debate how zombies are different from ghosts. They aren't IMO. They take spots from people who want to play and give them to people who aren't motivated enough to buy their own ticket. That, or they are thinly disguised ghosts. You disagree. The end.) Since you can't tell the difference, you either treat everyone like humans or you treat everyone like crap. Anything else is unfair.

There are big changes being proposed, on the heels of another recent change, with almost no data to support it - at least we don't have any other than sellout. Jeff might, and I'm glad he is more deliberative.

Demand at GENCON for True Dungeon is clearly much higher than supply, and seems to be trending more in that direction. No matter how many tickets were sold to ghosts, to me it seems better for True Dungeon if those tickets had been sold to people instead, possibly expanding the player base.

I understand that there are varied opinions on this.

No, I agree 100%. Always have. I know we all have the same goal in mind.

Where we disagree is (1) do we have to do something NOW, (2) what, and (3) who has to pay the price of reining in ghosts and zombies.

The problem is we don't have good data, so everyone is guessing

I think it's extremely unlikely that anything will be done to address players you refer to as zombies for a couple of reasons:

1) It's pretty much impossible to identify a "zombie" player from a "real" player. If there is an actual difference, which I'm still not sure of.

2) No matter why someone is playing True Dungeon, it is still an actual person playing, who has a legitimate chance of getting hooked on True Dungeon after playing an adventure. It's still another possible future True Dungeon fan, and I think True Dungeon values their participation.

Ghost players, on the other hand, are very easy to identify, and are a very easy issue to address, if Jeff chooses to. And of course, a ghost player has zero chance of becoming a long term True Dungeon fan.

5.82% is the other you got Steve not certain how you are are saying you are the lowest. You were not the lowest at items greater than UR either (though you were much lower than average. Not disagreeing with your points just your facts. Are you certain your Dragon Orb didn't come from one of those 362 pulls...lol? Again not disagreeing with your points. I had 15 relative strangers on my runs this year (more than I usually do) and 1 ghost on my last run. I usually have though between 5 to 10 relative strangers on my runs. As I said finding people that want to play TD at GC is not hard at all. These are people I pick up to fill in after my group gets their choice of tickets. Some I meet at other cons (had a couple from WYC this year), some at Gen Con that have always wanted to try TD but the cost is prohibitive from them trying, and some are folks that were looking for tickets to play their first time.

jedibcg wrote: 5.82% is the other you got Steve not certain how you are are saying you are the lowest. You were not the lowest at items greater than UR either (though you were much lower than average. Not disagreeing with your points just your facts. Are you certain your Dragon Orb didn't come from one of those 362 pulls...lol? Again not disagreeing with your points. I had 15 relative strangers on my runs this year (more than I usually do) and 1 ghost on my last run. I usually have though between 5 to 10 relative strangers on my runs. As I said finding people that want to play TD at GC is not hard at all. These are people I pick up to fill in after my group gets their choice of tickets. Some I meet at other cons (had a couple from WYC this year), some at Gen Con that have always wanted to try TD but the cost is prohibitive from them trying, and some are folks that were looking for tickets to play their first time.

Well .. I had almost 2X the number of greaves .. that throws the 'other' numbers around.
I was low .. but again .. "eh" .. the pulls are really just self-justification to my madness.
(I'm 100% positive the orb didn't come from those pulls. I pulled the orb the first day from the treasure the GW group got. )

Yeah .. I've had some coffee, and a banana. *snort* Kinder Steve is back on the forums.

We only had one ghost this year .. We also had one group that had 11 players .. so it averaged out.
I also witnessed someone give away a ticket to a (new player) Dad so he could be on the same run as his kids. That was a particularly cool moment.

Just limit ghosts to the 3 basic pulls, the 10-pack, and the badge/completion tokens for the difficulty that the group runs. Live players could equip synergistic tokens that would benefit the other living party members, but no extra treasure for ghosts. People would still get to do the 'challenge' runs they want to do, last minute no shows would still result in some return on the ticket, and farmers would have little incentive to grab treasure with that low of a return.

If this seems extreme, maybe TD can offer a certain number of ten-packs in exchange for the ticket or the player holding the ticket can try and get someone from the wait list to cover the potential 'loss'.

balthasar wrote: Just limit ghosts to the 3 basic pulls, the 10-pack, and the badge/completion tokens for the difficulty that the group runs. Live players could equip synergistic tokens that would benefit the other living party members, but no extra treasure for ghosts. People would still get to do the 'challenge' runs they want to do, last minute no shows would still result in some return on the ticket, and farmers would have little incentive to grab treasure with that low of a return.

If this seems extreme, maybe TD can offer a certain number of ten-packs in exchange for the ticket or the player holding the ticket can try and get someone from the wait list to cover the potential 'loss'.

If compensation is given for ghost players, I'm in favor of it being 10 packs. That would give some compensation for the ticket price, but wouldn't tempt anyone to token farm.

What about just streamlining the check-in/wait list process?

My biggest complaint about no-ghosts is if I have a 10 person run that I've paid for, I get penalized if someone doesn't show up; both on treasure loss and a wasted ticket. (I get around this by being super type-a, and getting my groups so excited about the run that they can't imagine missing it.)

Remove that loss with a better, proactive, waiting list .. and I'm less concerned :
I get paid for a ticket (or I work out some deal with the new player around loot)
The ticket doesn't get wasted.
The party isn't short a character.

Ideal? no, but you can give your friends shit for flaking out after the run.

I think a better 'wait list' would benefit everyone *including* TD actually.

I have ideas, but I don't know enough about how the wait list works .. other than knowing it is confusing, and painful.

@Mike - Ten packs outside of GenCon is way too much. TD Store credit or swap for a waitlisted ticket is more reasonable.

@Steve - IMO neither zombies nor ghosts are inherently evil. Some are. Some aren't. You sound like one of the good ones. I hope you didn't take anything I said personally, because I obviously wasn't talking about people like you. I'm not profiling.

How can we distinguish an ambassador of the game who wants everyone to have a good time, like you, from someone who treats their charges like dirt and is only concerned about confiscating their goodies? We can't. The first is likely to create new fans, the second to drive them away for years, if not forever.

How can we tell the difference between a zombie who might become a player, and one who definitely won't? Can't.

Same with ghosts. Who's a farmer and who just has flaky friends? Dunno.

One of my points, which I'm sure got lost somewhere, is that since we can't see into people's hearts and we can't divine their motives, we should treat them all the same. But that doesn't mean we should treat them all like criminals.

Anyway, things got heated. Sorry if I offended you.

It's frustrating. Several people, including Eric and Henwy, saw this day coming years ago. Most people were all "it'll never happen!" In those days, I asked a purposely absurd question: if the loot cap was 10k chips, would that break the game, and the answer I got from one person was "NO." Today, that same guy wants to cap loot at 10.

Now people see it and are all "holy crap, nobody saw that coming!!!" And most of the proposed solutions seem (to me anyway) needlessly complex and draconian, and even worse, none of them will address the real issue because people don't want to admit the root cause. Loot caps won't fix anything, just postpone the full impact a little longer.

Some possible solutions that are fair to everyone:
Raise ticket prices
Cap max loot for everyone at satellites
Change the loot mix
Stop raising the loot cap

Some solutions that will encourage gaming the system:
Varying loot caps based on intentions

But there's no point in bailing out the boat while people keep punching more holes in the bottom.

And next year we'll have the exact same conversation for a third time and come up with even worse remedies. That'll be awesome.

Steve wrote: What about just streamlining the check-in/wait list process?

My biggest complaint about no-ghosts is if I have a 10 person run that I've paid for, I get penalized if someone doesn't show up; both on treasure loss and a wasted ticket. (I get around this by being super type-a, and getting my groups so excited about the run that they can't imagine missing it.)

Remove that loss with a better, proactive, waiting list .. and I'm less concerned :
I get paid for a ticket (or I work out some deal with the new player around loot)
The ticket doesn't get wasted.
The party isn't short a character.

Ideal? no, but you can give your friends shit for flaking out after the run.

I think a better 'wait list' would benefit everyone *including* TD actually.

I have ideas, but I don't know enough about how the wait list works .. other than knowing it is confusing, and painful.

It's a lot like a waitlist at a restaurant, except there is no guarantee you'll get a spot.

Entries are # of players, any dungeon, specific dungeon, puzzle or combat, difficulty, and time window.

They are filled first come first serve, but only as what was requested comes available.

Single - any dungeon - any type - any difficulty - any time gets filled first for example, vs Double - Moongate Maze - Puzzle - Nightmare - 10:01 pm to 11:01 pm will likely be waiting a while or not get a spot at all.

Joshua Baessler wrote: 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?

Was my suggestion so bad that no one could even say anything about it? *lol*

I really think selling off whatever was not sold that day would solve the loot farming problem. As for special runs, like Laz said those folks can just try for them when they see there are unsold runs out there.

Brad Mortensen wrote: @Mike - Ten packs outside of GenCon is way too much. TD Store credit or swap for a waitlisted ticket is more reasonable.

@Steve - IMO neither zombies nor ghosts are inherently evil. Some are. Some aren't. You sound like one of the good ones. I hope you didn't take anything I said personally, because I obviously wasn't talking about people like you. I'm not profiling.

How can we distinguish an ambassador of the game who wants everyone to have a good time, like you, from someone who treats their charges like dirt and is only concerned about confiscating their goodies? We can't. The first is likely to create new fans, the second to drive them away for years, if not forever.

How can we tell the difference between a zombie who might become a player, and one who definitely won't? Can't.

Same with ghosts. Who's a farmer and who just has flaky friends? Dunno.

One of my points, which I'm sure got lost somewhere, is that since we can't see into people's hearts and we can't divine their motives, we should treat them all the same. But that doesn't mean we should treat them all like criminals.

Anyway, things got heated. Sorry if I offended you.

It's frustrating. Several people, including Eric and Henwy, saw this day coming years ago. Most people were all "it'll never happen!" In those days, I asked a purposely absurd question: if the loot cap was 10k chips, would that break the game, and the answer I got from one person was "NO." Today, that same guy wants to cap loot at 10.

Now people see it and are all "holy crap, nobody saw that coming!!!" And most of the proposed solutions seem (to me anyway) needlessly complex and draconian, and even worse, none of them will address the real issue because people don't want to admit the root cause. Loot caps won't fix anything, just postpone the full impact a little longer.

Some possible solutions that are fair to everyone:
Raise ticket prices
Cap max loot for everyone at satellites
Change the loot mix
Stop raising the loot cap

Some solutions that will encourage gaming the system:
Varying loot caps based on intentions

But there's no point in bailing out the boat while people keep punching more holes in the bottom.

And next year we'll have the exact same conversation for a third time and come up with even worse remedies. That'll be awesome.

Brad, we just had a miscommunication. When I said 10 packs I just meant some number of sealed token packs (I tend to refer to sealed packs as ten packs). I didn't mean ten sealed packs. I don't know what the right number of sealed packs would offset a ticket price, and I agree with you that it would be a different number at different comventions, based on the ticket price.

Brad Mortensen wrote: @Steve - IMO neither zombies nor ghosts are inherently evil. Some are. Some aren't. You sound like one of the good ones. I hope you didn't take anything I said personally, because I obviously wasn't talking about people like you. I'm not profiling.

...

Anyway, things got heated. Sorry if I offended you.

I wasn't offended in the least .. I rarely am.
I just hadn't had any coffee or food yet.

Hungry Steve is an opinionated ass-hat. I own that

Joshua Baessler wrote:

Joshua Baessler wrote: 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?

Was my suggestion so bad that no one could even say anything about it? *lol*

I really think selling off whatever was not sold that day would solve the loot farming problem. As for special runs, like Laz said those folks can just try for them when they see there are unsold runs out there.

I will answer by saying what I said early. Why are we attempting to 'fix' anything that Jeff has not communicated is an issue for him?