A Simple Solution to Changing Treasure Hunt

So, we all know that Treasure Hunt is outdated (though still fun, for lots of people), and anyone who has been playing for a while has thousands of Treasure Maps.

This makes any changes to the value of Treasure Hunt seemingly intractable, as it would give longer-term players an unfair advantage.

Luckily, there is a simple way around this: when you update Treasure Hunt, introduce a new kind of Treasure Map. That way, everyone starts from zero new Treasure Maps!

Discussion

For reference, let’s call the current Treasure Maps, “Ancient Treasure Maps,” and rename the new ones, “Treasure Maps.”

The new Treasure Maps are a completely new economy that you can manage any way you like. The question is, what to do with Ancient Treasure Maps? Apart from no longer giving players any more Ancient Treasure Maps, I see a few options (which could be concurrent):

Option 1

Retain the old Treasure Hunt (or just its rewards) for Ancient Treasure Maps. If the player has both types, they get a choice which to use before the Hunt begins.

Option 2

Convert all Ancient Treasure Maps to some other currency, eg: Gems or Gold. Possibly, the first 500 could be converted to new Treasure Maps.

Option 3

Give players the option to convert Ancient Treasure Maps to new Treasure Maps, but do it exponentially!

Most simply, you could say the first one is 1:1, the next is 10:1, then 100:1, then 1000:1, then 10000:1. So someone with 11,111 Ancient Treasure Maps would only get 5 new Treasure Maps. That seems a bit extreme, so you could instead use a factor of 2 (rather than 10), or do it in Tiers (eg: first 100 at 1:1, next 1000 at 10:1, etc).

By doing an exponential or quadratic – or any non-linear – conversion, you totally avoid any unfairness. And if old Treasure Hunt remains an option, the conversion becomes at the player’s choice.

The conversion could be a one-off event, but it’s probably best just to track each player’s conversion progress and let them convert a new bunch of Maps any time they want, at their accumulated conversion rate.


I hope that’s clear, and helpful. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Hmmm. I totally agree treasure hunt could benefit from a remodel. I almost wince when I see myself getting another map. Haha

Im not sure I’m following you on the part about long time players having an advantage if they don’t change the map. Because technically they already do. I’ve got about 8k of maps, right now. If I wanted to play them I would 8000 x the reward of someone who only has 1 map. That’s just how currency works within the game.

It seems (sorry if I’m wrong) you are suggesting a new currency to avoid maybe breaking the game economy? Meaning you want more Or better rewards for treasure hunt? If I’m right, then I get what you are saying. However, it still would not be equitable to, say, give me a 1:10 (example) trade on my currency just because I’ve been playing a little longer. Why? Because I played. Eventually that level 1 person will be level 1200 and will have gotten to use all of their maps while I would have only gotten to use a percent of the ones I earned from 1-1200.

I would agree with your idea if the map drop rate were reduced to match whatever the swap ratio is. Honestly, I would rather they not mess much with the rewards, other than tossing some writs in maybe. Instead, make the gameplay more interesting.

I play Treasure Hunt every day. I agree that treasure hunt needs to be re-worked. But I didn’t spend 6 years accumulating this many maps for you to throw them in the trash. I earned my advantage and you can forget about your clean slate.

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I never play treasure hunt unless I’m forced to, but River is spot on. We worked hard to get those maps and I would rather they sit there doing nothing at all than lose the stockpile I have earned.

3 Likes

I don’t think it’s necessary to make this change. I mean, you still need to spend time to play the treasure map to get the rewards (assuming there would be new ones that are worth the time), not automatically get them for free.

711 turns. Look at the rewards…

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6 gem keys, 18 gems, 120 glory. There might be more profitable ways to spend 3 hours, especially considering the missed tributes. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I realised some of you responding may not be aware of the view that the developers have taken, regarding a Treasure Map rework. (Which is fascinating, in itself!) Please allow me to give some context, as I know it.

The Gems of War Community Manager, @Saltypatra, streams weekly on Twitch (search the forums for Gems of Streaming for more info).

According to Salty, “many” people have been clamouring for a rework of Treasure Hunt. I don’t know who these people are (I don’t know if she knows their demographics), but the main arguments appear to be that we get so many Treasure Maps, that it would take too long to use them all, and that the rewards are too low (esp. compared to time spent).

Salty’s response to the request for a rework (and I can only assume she is passing on the developers’ response, rather than it being her own judgement), is that there are so many Treasure Maps in the game, that any rework would destroy the game’s economy (worse than it already is, anyway). The presumption seems to be a rework must necessarily increase the amount of rewards per time spent on Treasure Hunt – which is probably reasonable. (Although it is also possible to change the nature of the rewards to currencies that won’t do this.)

To sum up, some unspecified group of people have been urging the devs to improve the rewards from Treasure Hunt, but the devs feel that would break the game economy specifically because too many players have too many unused Treasure Maps.

My post was specifically intended to provide a way to reforming Treasure Hunt in this context without breaking the game economy, as the devs fear.

Note that combining Option 1 and 3 would allow Treasure Hunt fans to continue to use their existing maps for the current rewards, while also giving other options to other players, and allowing the devs to restart a new Treasure Map economy.

PS: The replies in this thread kind of emphasise to me how easy it is for a Community Manager to have a very different impression of a situation than many players. The only solution I can see is to somehow track the “demographics” (or something similar) of each point of view. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

simple database querry for # of tresure maps with a histogram grouping players for each 1k maps owned, would give a developers view to players (maybe to make things more clear, those having more than 20k can be put into 1 group)
we could see how the maps would look

but braking the economy, even if player has 10k maps (not mentioning thos who have 20 or 40k), he would have to spend weeks to use them all up, without even doing anything else… i doubt it would brake economy, especialy if we introduced some kind of tokens as a vault rewards and a shopkeeper who would ( in exchange for these tokens) offer both:
a) a limited number of rare resources every week (deeds, forge scrolls, ingots, whatever else you want to put here, maybe VIP keys, vault keys ?)
b) unlimited number of resources which can be farmed already → gems, gold, souls, glory, keys

that way it would give both:
a) a way to use hoarded resources
b) a way to not brake the economy, by limiting the extra ones…

Other idea for limited offers could be dimissing returns: players can buy any number of offered good, but prices go up with every item bought:
1st copy of a reward would have a standard price, 2nd copy of reward would have it doubled, 3rd trippled etc. prices could reset for every player and the reset.
Tokens would be a new resource type, which would have to be earned by playing the Hunt.

I was referring, there, to tracking who is saying what. That is, who is saying they want Treasure Maps to give more resources, versus who is saying they don’t want to lose the Maps they have.

The fear is that allowing someone to use 100 Treasure Maps at a time for 100 times the resources (or even 10 times the resources), for example, would break things.

Your other suggestions are essentially the same as mine, at their core.

But keep in mind that, from the devs’ point of view, the rate at which resources can be earned is just as important as the resource conversion cost. For example, increasing the speed of battles to x8 would mean we can theoretically gain resources twice as fast (more like 25% faster, since the server response times become a significant factor).

Maybe they should just make Treasure Hunt free to enter (or possibly charge 1000 gold, like Arena) and change all Treasure Maps to Writs?

1 Like

And that’s a bad design…
What i propose is an extra currency(token) that could be earned while doing treasure hunts. Players with huge ammount of maps, would still have to earn that currency(token), by playing the game. Their only advantage vs new players would be, that they dont have to farm maps.They would still have to earn tokens by playing the game.

Ok, let’s have a simulation:
1 Trasure Vault gives 1-3 (with 1.18 on average if you get the reference) Treasure Pieces(, which will be out Tokens, we will call them short TP) and nothing else, that’s the only thing we change in drop lists → Treasure Vaults give only Treasure Pieces. (other chests/bags/coins stay same)

This week shopkeeeper (from Grosh Nak) is glorious and has in offer:
1 Imperial Deed for 100 TP
1 Fire Deed for 50 TP
1 Stone Forge Scroll for 20 TP
10 Event Keys for 20 TP
80 Writs for 20 TP

on top of that, he also has regular offers:
5 Arcane Lava Traitstone for 10 TP
10 Gem Keys for 10 TP
500 souls for XX TP
5000 gold for YY TP

In order to buy one imperial deed, you would have to collect 85 or even more Treasure Vaults. Than can take depending from luck, probably 200 or more Treasure Hunt games (ofc, there are players that could get it done arround 100 - 100 games with a TV almost in each).
Let’s say player was determined and did those, and got his ID. If he wants to get 2nd copy of it, he now has to pay 200TP. So… we needs to open another 170-200 TV, and thus play another 200-400 Treasure Hunts… it would be a lot of grind and i doubt players even with huge stashes of keys, would spend their time doing nothing except TH.

And remeber next week shopkeeper might have other stuff → Vault Keys (@ 100TP starting price), maybe some packs of ingots, maybe even a book of Deeds for a mere 500TPs, etc.

Thing is, with such concept, you can make it “not so grindy” to get a single copy/week and “it’s an absurd” to get 2 or 3 copies/week.
Players should be able to pick, what they want to buy, and TP should stack over the weeks.
Some offers could have their prices unchanged all the time (like converting TPs into gem keys), others, for more precious and limited resources could have their price go up, everytime player buys them.

3 Likes

Not a bad system.

I actually think the Arena rework (what little I’ve heard of it) may be somewhat similar in structure.

Just let us craft 1K maps into an Imperial Deed and let’s get over with TH, I say.

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That will never happen. some people would get 40 imperial deeds from day 0… :stuck_out_tongue:

Those people would have to spend 4k diamonds on crafting those Imperial Deeds, which means passing on a mythic, so this might not even be considered a good deal from player perspective. Besides, considering the huge amount of Imperial Deeds we need for all kingdoms, 40 of them is barely noticeable.

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For people who have their collections full and are sitting on another 20k+ or 30k+ diamonds that wouldn’t be an issue.

True, but than again, it would just trigger another wave of hate onto DEVs how, some players with 40k treasure maps would be in advance to those who dont have many of them.
Plus, current kingdom levels and power levels ARE ment to be not obtainable in nearest future.
I suppose you should look for new updates and new ways of farming these resources slowly getting added with every update.
That’s more realistic than counting on exchanging any existing resource into writs/deeds/forge scrolls.
If anything i would be betting on somthing similiar to my suggestion-> that would allow players with HUGE ammounts of maps to run TH and get extra tokens, which would be exchangable for limited resources.
Only advantage these players would have vs new player, would be that they dont need to farm maps to run TH after TH.

Actually, they were meant to have been obtainable in the past. The roadmap they gave us said that we should have had enough Deeds by now to upgrade all kingdoms to level 15.

Too complicated, no matter how neat the idea would be. There’s a far simpler approach that might sound brutal at first glance. Remove Treasure Maps from the game, make an entrance fee similar to Arena. They never really had any value at all, if you wanted to play Treasure Hunt, obtaining a Treasure Map was the least of your problems. The first days you could put Tyri into your team, later on they just keep coming automatically faster than you can spend them.

I can see a few reasons they are still around after all these years, and all don’t reflect well on the game:

  • Preying on new players, they might buy them for cash until the realize they are about as abundant as spam mail.
  • Adding them as landfill material to overpriced bundles to artificially improve the “gem value” without actually handing out anything worthwhile.
  • Throwing them into reward tables (e.g. week 1 of the current campaign) whenever the reward budget is already spent and an empty slot would look awkward.

Instead of just outright removing all Treasure Maps they could add an extra tab to the shop, buy a minor amount of useful resources (e.g. gold, glory, souls, jewels, maybe even treasure troops) for a major amount of maps. It’s less heavy handed while still balanced, whoever has a huge pile of Treasure Maps stocked up will likely also have enough of those other resources to not really benefit in a major way. Not going to happen though, that phone has also been ringing for years without anybody picking up.

1 Like

That probably wont happen as it would require changing few troops spells (like Tyri’s) and fixing weapon affix…
And let’s be clear on it - they dont want to do that. It’s better to assume maps will stay. Every idea including removing maps is probably going to be rejected, because it creates a lot of unnecessary development.

Just give us one gem for every map we hold, and everyone will be happy(ish)