TOPIC: Ghosting proposal for smaller conventions

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.

Except you'd be wrong, there.

I do multiple 5-man runs, every GenCon. They've become my favorite* thing to do, even more than the GT run. If I can, I run 3 or 4 of them during the convention.

If I didn't run my DoubleDown runs, I'd run through the dungeon twice as often. (And I have proof of this: I used to do 10-12 runs per Con. Now I do six.)

So you can say that my ghost tickets would have been sold to "actual people" ... but really, what would happen is this: instead of buying 2 tickets to ONE run, I'd buy 1 ticket on TWO different runs. My 5-man runs don't result in any fewer tickets being sold.

What my 5-man runs actually do, is this:

- They caused me to invest in twice as many tokens (ie: I have 2 CoAs so both me and my Ghost can get treasure. Where, if I did single runs, I'd only need one CoA)

- I buy more tokens on the secondary market as well (Need to have top level gear, and extra potions, to survive a DoubleDown run)

- I have more free time to volunteer. In fact, when I started doing 5-man runs, i was able to move from "Casual/1shift" vol up to a "Part-Time/3-shift" vol.


If I didn't get the treasure from Ghosting, I'll admit I'd do less of it. $112 is too steep a price for me to pay for my TD experience, without offsetting the cost with treasure. But then I'd just go back to running through the dungeon twice as often, and TD would lose a Volunteer. I'd also be able to decrease my yearly token purchase, and sell off a bunch of my high-end gear, because I really don't need it anymore. And on top of that, I wouldn't have as enjoyable a TD experience.

So, yeah.... from where I sit, when I see you say "Tickets from ghosting would be sold to actual people" what I hear is "You don't count as actual people."




*I do DoubleDown runs because I like to collect extra completion tokens, I enjoy the loot, but most of all, I LOVE how much they remind me of the first year of TD, when we only had 6 players per group! It's a completely different experience going through the dungeon and being able to hear everyone in your group (and the DM!), not bumping into each other in hallways, being able to get 4-5 round of combat in, and the challenge of solving 10-man puzzles with only 5 participants! It's not for everyone, but for me, it's a fantastic experience every time.

jedibcg wrote:

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?

I think that approach could backfire, especially at the smaller conventions. You'd likely have several people trying to get first in line to write a check for whatever it would cost to buy the entire amount.

So far, Jeff hasn't shown any interest in selling token pulls. It's been suggested multiple times, so I doubt it's going to gain any traction.

Mike Steele wrote:

jedibcg wrote:

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?

I think that approach could backfire, especially at the smaller conventions. You'd likely have several people trying to get first in line to write a check for whatever it would cost to buy the entire amount.

So far, Jeff hasn't shown any interest in selling token pulls. It's been suggested multiple times, so I doubt it's going to gain any traction.

BC - Preemptive solution to a foreseeable problem, I guess? I like to be proactive rather than reactive. I feel it's likely there are going to be a lot of unsold tickets and probably entire runs at GHC and Origins again.

Mike - I agree with you, that's why I said a limit of ten. TD gets ticket revenue that would have otherwise not been there, real people get first dibs on tickets, people wanting to buy tickets just for treasure get theirs if and only if the tickets go unsold.

Raven wrote:

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.

Except you'd be wrong, there.

I do multiple 5-man runs, every GenCon. They've become my favorite* thing to do, even more than the GT run. If I can, I run 3 or 4 of them during the convention.

If I didn't run my DoubleDown runs, I'd run through the dungeon twice as often. (And I have proof of this: I used to do 10-12 runs per Con. Now I do six.)

So you can say that my ghost tickets would have been sold to "actual people" ... but really, what would happen is this: instead of buying 2 tickets to ONE run, I'd buy 1 ticket on TWO different runs. My 5-man runs don't result in any fewer tickets being sold.

What my 5-man runs actually do, is this:

- They caused me to invest in twice as many tokens (ie: I have 2 CoAs so both me and my Ghost can get treasure. Where, if I did single runs, I'd only need one CoA)

- I buy more tokens on the secondary market as well (Need to have top level gear, and extra potions, to survive a DoubleDown run)

- I have more free time to volunteer. In fact, when I started doing 5-man runs, i was able to move from "Casual/1shift" vol up to a "Part-Time/3-shift" vol.


If I didn't get the treasure from Ghosting, I'll admit I'd do less of it. $112 is too steep a price for me to pay for my TD experience, without offsetting the cost with treasure. But then I'd just go back to running through the dungeon twice as often, and TD would lose a Volunteer. I'd also be able to decrease my yearly token purchase, and sell off a bunch of my high-end gear, because I really don't need it anymore. And on top of that, I wouldn't have as enjoyable a TD experience.

So, yeah.... from where I sit, when I see you say "Tickets from ghosting would be sold to actual people" what I hear is "You don't count as actual people."




*I do DoubleDown runs because I like to collect extra completion tokens, I enjoy the loot, but most of all, I LOVE how much they remind me of the first year of TD, when we only had 6 players per group! It's a completely different experience going through the dungeon and being able to hear everyone in your group (and the DM!), not bumping into each other in hallways, being able to get 4-5 round of combat in, and the challenge of solving 10-man puzzles with only 5 participants! It's not for everyone, but for me, it's a fantastic experience every time.

Beyond all that, its not likely that any of those ghosted tickets would go to new players. If the group wants to play Nightmare they will want someone who can play at that level. So the "expand the player base" argument doesn't apply there.

Joshua Baessler wrote:

Mike Steele wrote:

jedibcg wrote:

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?

I think that approach could backfire, especially at the smaller conventions. You'd likely have several people trying to get first in line to write a check for whatever it would cost to buy the entire amount.

So far, Jeff hasn't shown any interest in selling token pulls. It's been suggested multiple times, so I doubt it's going to gain any traction.

BC - Preemptive solution to a foreseeable problem, I guess? I like to be proactive rather than reactive. I feel it's likely there are going to be a lot of unsold tickets and probably entire runs at GHC and Origins again.

Mike - I agree with you, that's why I said a limit of ten. TD gets ticket revenue that would have otherwise not been there, real people get first dibs on tickets, people wanting to buy tickets just for treasure get theirs if and only if the tickets go unsold.

Sell raffle tickets, one per unsold ticket.
Cost = cost of ticket, or one unused ticket.
Winners get a bag of loot.
Losers get their money back.

Oh, and fill them in ascending order.
First, everyone asking for one gets one, then the twos, etc. So the more you try for, the less likely you are to get any.

That sounds fun.

Harlax wrote:

Raven wrote:

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.

Except you'd be wrong, there.

I do multiple 5-man runs, every GenCon. They've become my favorite* thing to do, even more than the GT run. If I can, I run 3 or 4 of them during the convention.

If I didn't run my DoubleDown runs, I'd run through the dungeon twice as often. (And I have proof of this: I used to do 10-12 runs per Con. Now I do six.)

So you can say that my ghost tickets would have been sold to "actual people" ... but really, what would happen is this: instead of buying 2 tickets to ONE run, I'd buy 1 ticket on TWO different runs. My 5-man runs don't result in any fewer tickets being sold.

What my 5-man runs actually do, is this:

- They caused me to invest in twice as many tokens (ie: I have 2 CoAs so both me and my Ghost can get treasure. Where, if I did single runs, I'd only need one CoA)

- I buy more tokens on the secondary market as well (Need to have top level gear, and extra potions, to survive a DoubleDown run)

- I have more free time to volunteer. In fact, when I started doing 5-man runs, i was able to move from "Casual/1shift" vol up to a "Part-Time/3-shift" vol.


If I didn't get the treasure from Ghosting, I'll admit I'd do less of it. $112 is too steep a price for me to pay for my TD experience, without offsetting the cost with treasure. But then I'd just go back to running through the dungeon twice as often, and TD would lose a Volunteer. I'd also be able to decrease my yearly token purchase, and sell off a bunch of my high-end gear, because I really don't need it anymore. And on top of that, I wouldn't have as enjoyable a TD experience.

So, yeah.... from where I sit, when I see you say "Tickets from ghosting would be sold to actual people" what I hear is "You don't count as actual people."




*I do DoubleDown runs because I like to collect extra completion tokens, I enjoy the loot, but most of all, I LOVE how much they remind me of the first year of TD, when we only had 6 players per group! It's a completely different experience going through the dungeon and being able to hear everyone in your group (and the DM!), not bumping into each other in hallways, being able to get 4-5 round of combat in, and the challenge of solving 10-man puzzles with only 5 participants! It's not for everyone, but for me, it's a fantastic experience every time.

Beyond all that, its not likely that any of those ghosted tickets would go to new players. If the group wants to play Nightmare they will want someone who can play at that level. So the "expand the player base" argument doesn't apply there.

Raven, I certainly didn't mean to give offense, you are totally real people.

I'd never heard of someone ghosting and doing half the runs as a result. Do the other four people you run with do the same thing? Those are good points, but there are likely other tickets that were only bought for token farming, and which would go to real people if the token farming weren't taking place. It is a complicated issue. Raven, I'd guess you are fairly unique in that you are reducing your runs by 50% as a result of doing challenge runs, but perhaps I'm wrong and that's a fairly common mode that I'd never heard about.

With the option of getting token sealed packs to compensate for ghost players instead of treasure pulls and completion tokens, that would still let someone do challenge runs and get some compensation for the ghost tickets they buy, and at the same time discourage ghost players just for token farming.

Mike Steele wrote: Raven, I certainly didn't mean to give offense, you are totally real people.

I know I'm going to burn for this .. but is there anyone else out there that thought 'Solient Raven' after reading this?

Steve wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: Raven, I certainly didn't mean to give offense, you are totally real people.

I know I'm going to burn for this .. but is there anyone else out there that keeps hearing 'Solient Raven' in their head after reading this?

Worst branding decision of all time:

www.soylent.com

After reading all of the posts I may be overwhelmed with info but what if people who wanted to ghost while not doing a challenge run had to offer to take a new player or someone who would normally not be able to experience true dungeon with their group. I guess the ticket owner could keep their treasure above the original 3 pulls and completion tokens but it would get more people involved and require a list of people that would be interested in this situation. I know it may not be the best idea but it keeps most of the ticket investment with the owner but allows someone to get the experience.

Steve wrote:

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote: using actual people at the smaller cons, could get them hooked into playing. That is why some people still by the whole slot and bring newbies free of charge. I know a few did at origins. The "new" players liked it. Some I actually saw come back through later without the ticket buyer(they went and bought another ticket on their own)

^^THIS!!!

I do this every year at GenCon. This year I added 19 new players into our pool. (one spouse that didn't get to go on our run .. but wanted to) These were people who couldn't get tickets (22 minute sell out .. seriously .. what new player is going to understand THAT?!), and were more than happy enough to try the game for free. *EVERY* single one told me they would play next year if they could get tickets. (One group worked so well together, they are already *organizing* for next year!) I really work on organizing them ahead of time, and making sure *everyone* gets to participate and has a good time. I saw *EVERY* single player from my two 'noob' (zombie?) runs last year in the dungeon this year .. most of them made it a point to say hi, and introduce me to people *they* dragged into an adventure.

I'm going to be atypically blunt here :

I spent $1240 on tickets for total strangers this year. (that doesn't include the cost of tokens I bought from people in this thread to tweak builds for these runs.) I also gave away at least 50 or 60 rare and uncommon tokens from the treasure boxes in PUG runs. I've always been open and honest that I use the treasure pulls from New Player runs to justify the cost of paying for them (to myself anyways).

I received 362 treasure pulls for those runs. I did not get $1240 worth of treasure from those tickets. . If anyone has a problem with me doing 'zombie' runs .. please .. explain to me how much *you* spent out of pocket to get new players involved this year. If anyone feels that I have somehow 'taken advantage' of either True Dungeon or New Players, step up and put your proverbial Wang (or wallet) on the table and show me the path of righteousness.

I pulled over 1300 treasure this year .. and I got (at least according to Jedi's spreadsheet) the *lowest* average of 'stuff' out of anyone. (Edit: I should have said 'the lowest average out of the larger sample sets.) If I was doing 'zombie runs' for 'profit' .. I'm fairly sure *THAT* would be my incentive to stop doing them. Thankfully .. I don't do them for profit, I do them because I like introducing new people to the game. Years working in the gaming industry taught me one *very* important lesson : your company lives and dies on 'new blood'.

True Dungeon is no different.

So .. is the conversation about making sure people can play? Or is the conversation about how some people shouldn't get more treasure than other people (even if they own some $16,000 worth of Treasure Enhancers). Because if the conversation *ISN'T* about making sure new people can play .. then it feels like folks have an agenda.

Steve, I agree 100% It should be about the new players. I posted this earlier in the thread but it didn't seem to generate much talk.
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)

So having read through some later posts, I have a few items to add I believe Jeff to be a far greater business person than some of you have given him credit for being. The particular instance I am speaking about is that Ghosting could potentially cost TD money.
I am sure that Jeff has figured out exactly what an extra ticket costs and what one is expected to pull from the treasure boxes and has designed it so that he is not losing money when one buys a ticket and pulls treasure.

Raven wrote:

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.

Except you'd be wrong, there.

I do multiple 5-man runs, every GenCon. They've become my favorite* thing to do, even more than the GT run. If I can, I run 3 or 4 of them during the convention.

If I didn't run my DoubleDown runs, I'd run through the dungeon twice as often. (And I have proof of this: I used to do 10-12 runs per Con. Now I do six.)

So you can say that my ghost tickets would have been sold to "actual people" ... but really, what would happen is this: instead of buying 2 tickets to ONE run, I'd buy 1 ticket on TWO different runs. My 5-man runs don't result in any fewer tickets being sold.

What my 5-man runs actually do, is this:

- They caused me to invest in twice as many tokens (ie: I have 2 CoAs so both me and my Ghost can get treasure. Where, if I did single runs, I'd only need one CoA)

- I buy more tokens on the secondary market as well (Need to have top level gear, and extra potions, to survive a DoubleDown run)

- I have more free time to volunteer. In fact, when I started doing 5-man runs, i was able to move from "Casual/1shift" vol up to a "Part-Time/3-shift" vol.


If I didn't get the treasure from Ghosting, I'll admit I'd do less of it. $112 is too steep a price for me to pay for my TD experience, without offsetting the cost with treasure. But then I'd just go back to running through the dungeon twice as often, and TD would lose a Volunteer. I'd also be able to decrease my yearly token purchase, and sell off a bunch of my high-end gear, because I really don't need it anymore. And on top of that, I wouldn't have as enjoyable a TD experience.

So, yeah.... from where I sit, when I see you say "Tickets from ghosting would be sold to actual people" what I hear is "You don't count as actual people."




*I do DoubleDown runs because I like to collect extra completion tokens, I enjoy the loot, but most of all, I LOVE how much they remind me of the first year of TD, when we only had 6 players per group! It's a completely different experience going through the dungeon and being able to hear everyone in your group (and the DM!), not bumping into each other in hallways, being able to get 4-5 round of combat in, and the challenge of solving 10-man puzzles with only 5 participants! It's not for everyone, but for me, it's a fantastic experience every time.

The double-down runs with Raven are awesomesauce!

Bob Chasan wrote:

Steve wrote:

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote: using actual people at the smaller cons, could get them hooked into playing. That is why some people still by the whole slot and bring newbies free of charge. I know a few did at origins. The "new" players liked it. Some I actually saw come back through later without the ticket buyer(they went and bought another ticket on their own)

^^THIS!!!

I do this every year at GenCon. This year I added 19 new players into our pool. (one spouse that didn't get to go on our run .. but wanted to) These were people who couldn't get tickets (22 minute sell out .. seriously .. what new player is going to understand THAT?!), and were more than happy enough to try the game for free. *EVERY* single one told me they would play next year if they could get tickets. (One group worked so well together, they are already *organizing* for next year!) I really work on organizing them ahead of time, and making sure *everyone* gets to participate and has a good time. I saw *EVERY* single player from my two 'noob' (zombie?) runs last year in the dungeon this year .. most of them made it a point to say hi, and introduce me to people *they* dragged into an adventure.

I'm going to be atypically blunt here :

I spent $1240 on tickets for total strangers this year. (that doesn't include the cost of tokens I bought from people in this thread to tweak builds for these runs.) I also gave away at least 50 or 60 rare and uncommon tokens from the treasure boxes in PUG runs. I've always been open and honest that I use the treasure pulls from New Player runs to justify the cost of paying for them (to myself anyways).

I received 362 treasure pulls for those runs. I did not get $1240 worth of treasure from those tickets. . If anyone has a problem with me doing 'zombie' runs .. please .. explain to me how much *you* spent out of pocket to get new players involved this year. If anyone feels that I have somehow 'taken advantage' of either True Dungeon or New Players, step up and put your proverbial Wang (or wallet) on the table and show me the path of righteousness.

I pulled over 1300 treasure this year .. and I got (at least according to Jedi's spreadsheet) the *lowest* average of 'stuff' out of anyone. (Edit: I should have said 'the lowest average out of the larger sample sets.) If I was doing 'zombie runs' for 'profit' .. I'm fairly sure *THAT* would be my incentive to stop doing them. Thankfully .. I don't do them for profit, I do them because I like introducing new people to the game. Years working in the gaming industry taught me one *very* important lesson : your company lives and dies on 'new blood'.

True Dungeon is no different.

So .. is the conversation about making sure people can play? Or is the conversation about how some people shouldn't get more treasure than other people (even if they own some $16,000 worth of Treasure Enhancers). Because if the conversation *ISN'T* about making sure new people can play .. then it feels like folks have an agenda.

Steve, I agree 100% It should be about the new players. I posted this earlier in the thread but it didn't seem to generate much talk.
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)

So having read through some later posts, I have a few items to add I believe Jeff to be a far greater business person than some of you have given him credit for being. The particular instance I am speaking about is that Ghosting could potentially cost TD money.
I am sure that Jeff has figured out exactly what an extra ticket costs and what one is expected to pull from the treasure boxes and has designed it so that he is not losing money when one buys a ticket and pulls treasure.

New players. I'll say it again. Chances are slim that new players would be offered spots in those runs. The sponsor has all 10 tickets, the new players are not Nightmare equipped, the new players won't have the treasure enhancing tokens to bring the party to full treasure (they could be loaned out of course).

Now if some of us start shifting runs to the smaller Cons, that will do more to open spots at GenCon.