So, we all know that Treasure Hunt is outdated (though still fun, for lots of people), and anyone who has been playing for a while has thousands of Treasure Maps.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