Is Every Run Winnable?

[speedingdeath]

Hi there,

As per the title, I'm curious of the opinion of experienced players around how possible it is to win every run.

I've enjoyed many roguelikes, and managed to achieve win streaks in a few, such as Binding of Isaac and Hades. In both of these games, there is of course RNG, but with enough skill, just about all runs are winnable, and we see this in the runs popularised by some streamers.

Now with Monster Train, being around Covenant 9, I had a string of losses with Melting/Umbra, because my starting cards, and those awarded after the first fight, didn't include options that resulted in winnable runs.

Now, I'm sure every path for Flicker has a possible win in it, but sometimes, in some particular runs, depending on what cards are given and champion paths are available, there are just no good decisions - if you have no reform or burnout extension cards, the burnout Flicker will die before he fights the boss. If you have no good creatures to resurrect, the reform Flicker will be reforming morsels, which can leave you without good units when the boss arrives - in fact, even in a run where I purged all but 2 good morsel cards, and had a massive array of copied multistrikers with 4 abilities due to events, I still randomly resurrected only morsels just by bad luck. Harvest Flicker is consistently mediocre, often getting me far in the run, but always failing to do enough damage by himself to stem the tide of big mobs before the boss, so he requires both all-in morsel feeding, and a second lucky break on a powerful carry to do damage.

Considering the number of runs where there was ostensibly no decision I could have made that would have allowed me to win, save for making an unusual choice and then getting lucky later, it raises the question of whether or not all runs even can be won? Even with perfect information about future draws, is it always possible to choose your cards and play them in a way that guarantees victory?

As a reasonably experienced Magic player, I'm well aware of the delusion that many players have of how skill influences their ability to win, but in reality, even that game is incredibly variable, and even the best players sometimes go 0-5. But that game has 2 human players, so someone has to lose. But this is a PvE game, so perhaps just being better will allow one to always see the best line?

My guess is no. I believe the randomness means unwinnable runs are possible, and so win streaks are bound above by one's luck.

[Rianith]

I predict this thread descends into stupidity. Thanks for the intelligent contributions till this point...

[Rianith]

I am still kinda interested in hearing from some folks at Cov 25 how often they win.

[Lotion]

Randomness isn't a design flaw. If you play a game of poker, you could do every decision correctly and play perfectly and still lose. I certainly wouldn't go to the casino and tell them there is a design flaw in the game of poker because i lost. I know that not everyone likes randomness but to say its the devs fault is not correct. Getting the "perfect seed" is not really needed either.

[Lotion]

At cov 25 it depends on if you random/random or pick your teams. I think some combinations are inherently difficult because they lack wave clear or very vulnerable to sweep bosses. Its about 50/50 wins and losses for me when i pick my teams.

[Rianith]

So, curious, at Cov 25, what are the best clan combos?
At Cov 5, Stygian seems strong, and hellhorned seems weak to me...

[Neon Black Interactive]

I know for sure at cov 25 not every run is winnable. Sometimes the pieces just aren't there. I know some people have an issue with "start scumming" but I ♥♥♥♥ you not on cov 25 some starting set ups actually aren't good enough to clear the first and second fights.

[Dlanor]

There are players from the beta with winstreaks lasting over 80 on cov1 and above, and that was before lots of buffs at launch and post-launch buffs to 2 of the 5 champs. If you truly want a game you can win every run of, I am 100% confident there are never cov1 runs you cannot ever win by making good choices, even if it takes multiple tries.

I'd be shocked if there were more than like 1% of runs that are fully impossible to win, even at Cov25. There are so many choices in the game, there's always the thought of "what If I went left instead of right", "what if I rerolled the shop and got something better", "what if I went for a different strategy from the start". Like, maybe you lose a run with Awoken because you started with the Rejuvenate path, but if you picked the Revenge path on this specific run your chances of winning may have been way higher because cards offered after the fights work better with that champion variant.

At the absolute least, I'd be shocked if you could see the full layout of the game and not route out at least 1 path to victory for more than 1% of the games, because there's almost always going to be something crazy like "oh Trans Imp pops up in this specific path after fight 3 and then the merchant of Steel offers Endless if you reroll the shop, suddenly skipping Impsicle doesn't see like such a good choice, does it". People claiming they think a lot of runs are unwinnable are probably mistaking "impossible to win" with "difficult to win if you make choices that would be optimal in other runs". You'll see this a lot, for example people skip "Incant:Gain 1 armor" a lot, but would you skip it if you knew for a fact the artifact that gives +4 armor whenever you gain it comes after the next fight if you go left? When you lay out all the outcomes there's a LOT of different paths, and in a game where combos as simple as 2 pieces can be game winning, there's going to be very few times it's actually not possible to win, you'd need the RNG on what artifacts and cards get offered to low things that practically never synergize at all.

The thing about skill in a game like this is that "knowing things that win the most" is a viable skill. A skilled player might take a worse card because they know the chances that they later find something that synergizes with it is higher than if they take the better card. A skilled player might take a relic they have no synergy at all with, one that actually does nothing for them, if they know it is there only chance to later turn a deck doomed to fail into a deck capable of winning. Like the example before, if you see +25 health or +Incant: Gain 1 armor", and you will probably lose if you don't get something busted, +25 health will not help you because it will never lead to something busted, BUT if you take the Incant there are multiple cards and artifacts you can find that can instantly turn your whole run around just because you already own "Incant: Gain 1 armor". Even if it does NOTHING for your deck right now, a skilled player might metagame and think "I have a 0% chance of winning if I don't find a way to break the game, +25 health does not ever help me break the game, Incant: Gain 1 armor will help me break the game in 15% of runs, so I need to take it to improve my odds".

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by Urilbedamned:

I know for sure at cov 25 not every run is winnable. Sometimes the pieces just aren't there. I know some people have an issue with "start scumming" but I ♥♥♥♥ you not on cov 25 some starting set ups actually aren't good enough to clear the first and second fights.

I'd love to see proof of that, please feel free to link a single Cov25 run that is impossible to win if you've encountered one. If you can't prove it, you can't say you know "for sure", because the burden of proof is on whoever claims something must exist, like saying Unicorns exist. Until we find a Unicorn, you can't claim 100% they are real, we have nothing suggesting this is true yet. It's ok to think they exist, but that's different from claiming it as a fact without proof.

[speedingdeath]

Originally posted by Thegooblop:

There are players from the beta with winstreaks lasting over 80 on cov1 and above, and that was before lots of buffs at launch and post-launch buffs to 2 of the 5 champs. If you truly want a game you can win every run of, I am 100% confident there are never cov1 runs you cannot ever win by making good choices, even if it takes multiple tries.

I'd be shocked if there were more than like 1% of runs that are fully impossible to win, even at Cov25. There are so many choices in the game, there's always the thought of "what If I went left instead of right", "what if I rerolled the shop and got something better", "what if I went for a different strategy from the start". Like, maybe you lose a run with Awoken because you started with the Rejuvenate path, but if you picked the Revenge path on this specific run your chances of winning may have been way higher because cards offered after the fights work better with that champion variant.

At the absolute least, I'd be shocked if you could see the full layout of the game and not route out at least 1 path to victory for more than 1% of the games, because there's almost always going to be something crazy like "oh Trans Imp pops up in this specific path after fight 3 and then the merchant of Steel offers Endless if you reroll the shop, suddenly skipping Impsicle doesn't see like such a good choice, does it". People claiming they think a lot of runs are unwinnable are probably mistaking "impossible to win" with "difficult to win if you make choices that would be optimal in other runs". You'll see this a lot, for example people skip "Incant:Gain 1 armor" a lot, but would you skip it if you knew for a fact the artifact that gives +4 armor whenever you gain it comes after the next fight if you go left? When you lay out all the outcomes there's a LOT of different paths, and in a game where combos as simple as 2 pieces can be game winning, there's going to be very few times it's actually not possible to win, you'd need the RNG on what artifacts and cards get offered to low things that practically never synergize at all.

The thing about skill in a game like this is that "knowing things that win the most" is a viable skill. A skilled player might take a worse card because they know the chances that they later find something that synergizes with it is higher than if they take the better card. A skilled player might take a relic they have no synergy at all with, one that actually does nothing for them, if they know it is there only chance to later turn a deck doomed to fail into a deck capable of winning. Like the example before, if you see +25 health or +Incant: Gain 1 armor", and you will probably lose if you don't get something busted, +25 health will not help you because it will never lead to something busted, BUT if you take the Incant there are multiple cards and artifacts you can find that can instantly turn your whole run around just because you already own "Incant: Gain 1 armor". Even if it does NOTHING for your deck right now, a skilled player might metagame and think "I have a 0% chance of winning if I don't find a way to break the game, +25 health does not ever help me break the game, Incant: Gain 1 armor will help me break the game in 15% of runs, so I need to take it to improve my odds".

That's a thoughtful comment, thank you.

One thing I'll note, however, is that even if it is as you say, I do believe that the game might skew towards Poker, like the other commenter mentioned, in the sense that you can end frequently end up in situations where there is clearly an optimal play, but that play is optimal because of its odds of success, not because it guarantees success; you could play the best game, relying on the least possible luck going in your favour, yet still have it work against you. So even if the right play was the taking the 'Incant: Gain 1 armor', perhaps that next combo piece never came, and he lost the run because his tank took 24 damage over his HP, meaning the 25 hp up would have made him win, even though it wasn't a good play.

[Ulto]

From my experience up to covenant 21, you have much stronger odds if you get some damage cards in your starting hand. Besides, if you don't get a champion path or unit that offers a good solution against boss, it is very difficult to even defeat the second or third boss.

@Rianith: The hellhorned champion is actually very strong if you manage it carefully to get kills, especially with the little extra armor it was given in the latest patch not to get killed by thorns. You just need some buffer units in front of him and it can on its own be the key to your build.

[speedingdeath]

Originally posted by Thegooblop:

Originally posted by Urilbedamned:

I know for sure at cov 25 not every run is winnable. Sometimes the pieces just aren't there. I know some people have an issue with "start scumming" but I ♥♥♥♥ you not on cov 25 some starting set ups actually aren't good enough to clear the first and second fights.

I'd love to see proof of that, please feel free to link a single Cov25 run that is impossible to win if you've encountered one. If you can't prove it, you can't say you know "for sure", because the burden of proof is on whoever claims something must exist, like saying Unicorns exist. Until we find a Unicorn, you can't claim 100% they are real, we have nothing suggesting this is true yet. It's ok to think they exist, but that's different from claiming it as a fact without proof.

I think this is the wrong way of looking at it.

Even if there is some particular set of decisions that makes the run winnable with perfect knowledge, it is far less difficult to demonstrate that with high frequency, safe plays can lead to unwinnable situations.

Unless someone can demonstrate a heuristic that always leads to victory, then whether or not there are 'theoretically' winnable runs is somewhat moot, since nobody is going to play a seed over and over just to hunt for the line that wins. We encounter runs in our streaks as they appear, so I think whether runs are winnable blind is the more interesting distinction.

I'll admit the way I phrased the question made it seem that I was interested in theoretical wins, and while I'm curious, I wasn't aware you could choose seeds, and that's really not the angle I think is important.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by speedingdeath:

That's a thoughtful comment, thank you.

One thing I'll note, however, is that even if it is as you say, I do believe that the game might skew towards Poker, like the other commenter mentioned, in the sense that you can end frequently end up in situations where there is clearly an optimal play, but that play is optimal because of its odds of success, not because it guarantees success; you could play the best game, relying on the least possible luck going in your favour, yet still have it work against you. So even if the right play was the taking the 'Incant: Gain 1 armor', perhaps that next combo piece never came, and he lost the run because his tank took 24 damage over his HP, meaning the 25 hp up would have made him win, even though it wasn't a good play.

Right, I'd agree that it's possible that you can make the optimal plays and still lose at Cov25. I'd also argue that sometimes seemingly sub-optimal plays can win a game, I think an omnipotent player could probably get a 99.99% winrate off of the fact that they see every path, every option, and would be able to recognize every single synergy a run has potential for. You'd need an abysmally unlucky run without any existing synergies between any of the existing offerings in order to reach a truly unwinnable run, and maybe those do exist, but they've got to be rare enough that merely finding one would be a challenge.

I don't see any of this as a problem, like I said for people who want easy wins just by making "great" choices, Cov1 is probably possible to win as a skilled player without obvious misplays 100% of the time. Cov25 is more about maximizing winrate, which only makes sense if winrate is never truly 100%, otherwise why not make the difficulty go up higher to 30? The human element and lack of omnipotence keeps us from 100% winrate in Cov25, unlike Poker where even an omnipotent player will sometimes lose just because even knowing every piece of information won't let you win all hands if the deck is cruel to you.

[speedingdeath]

Originally posted by Thegooblop:

Originally posted by speedingdeath:

That's a thoughtful comment, thank you.

One thing I'll note, however, is that even if it is as you say, I do believe that the game might skew towards Poker, like the other commenter mentioned, in the sense that you can end frequently end up in situations where there is clearly an optimal play, but that play is optimal because of its odds of success, not because it guarantees success; you could play the best game, relying on the least possible luck going in your favour, yet still have it work against you. So even if the right play was the taking the 'Incant: Gain 1 armor', perhaps that next combo piece never came, and he lost the run because his tank took 24 damage over his HP, meaning the 25 hp up would have made him win, even though it wasn't a good play.

Right, I'd agree that it's possible that you can make the optimal plays and still lose at Cov25. I'd also argue that sometimes seemingly sub-optimal plays can win a game, I think an omnipotent player could probably get a 99.99% winrate off of the fact that they see every path, every option, and would be able to recognize every single synergy a run has potential for. You'd need an abysmally unlucky run without any existing synergies between any of the existing offerings in order to reach a truly unwinnable run, and maybe those do exist, but they've got to be rare enough that merely finding one would be a challenge.

I don't see any of this as a problem, like I said for people who want easy wins just by making "great" choices, Cov1 is probably possible to win as a skilled player without obvious misplays 100% of the time. Cov25 is more about maximizing winrate, which only makes sense if winrate is never truly 100%, otherwise why not make the difficulty go up higher to 30? The human element and lack of omnipotence keeps us from 100% winrate in Cov25, unlike Poker where even an omnipotent player will sometimes lose just because even knowing every piece of information won't let you win all hands if the deck is cruel to you.

I agree with this perspective. I think it's okay for the game to present you with scenarios where you can only use best judgement and hope it works out. Although it will mean long streaks at Cov 25 will be take a lot of luck.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by speedingdeath:

I agree with this perspective. I think it's okay for the game to present you with scenarios where you can only use best judgement and hope it works out. Although it will mean long streaks at Cov 25 will be take a lot of luck.

I think the most important part is that the more skilled you are, the more you can work around luck and win with even ♥♥♥♥♥♥ RNG. Someone getting a Cov25 winstreak of 10 is showing they're obviously great at the game even ignoring RNG. Luck can win you a run here and there, but you can very easily get an idea how skilled a player is by glancing at the winstreaks they have. A Cov25 winstreak past 5 is simply not happening through luck alone. Luck is a factor in pretty much any card game, but again just like Poker a skilled player can minimize losses and maximize wins through skill. There's enough skill in Monster Train to keep some players from ever winning at Cov25 (until they improve), but even the best players can't win every time. That is really enough to give Winstreaks some weight, if you could always win everytime without luck a winstreak would merely be a test of endurance for anyone with the skill required to get 100% winrate, unlike the current system where someone with even just 20 winstreak at Cov25 is obviously very very good.

[speedingdeath]

Originally posted by Thegooblop:

Originally posted by speedingdeath:

I agree with this perspective. I think it's okay for the game to present you with scenarios where you can only use best judgement and hope it works out. Although it will mean long streaks at Cov 25 will be take a lot of luck.

I think the most important part is that the more skilled you are, the more you can work around luck and win with even ♥♥♥♥♥♥ RNG. Someone getting a Cov25 winstreak of 10 is showing they're obviously great at the game even ignoring RNG. Luck can win you a run here and there, but you can very easily get an idea how skilled a player is by glancing at the winstreaks they have. A Cov25 winstreak past 5 is simply not happening through luck alone. Luck is a factor in pretty much any card game, but again just like Poker a skilled player can minimize losses and maximize wins through skill. There's enough skill in Monster Train to keep some players from ever winning at Cov25 (until they improve), but even the best players can't win every time. That is really enough to give Winstreaks some weight, if you could always win everytime without luck a winstreak would merely be a test of endurance for anyone with the skill required to get 100% winrate, unlike the current system where someone with even just 20 winstreak at Cov25 is obviously very very good.

That's true, I'm just observing that luck is necessary; I'm not saying that luck is sufficient, but that skill alone is *not* sufficient. Other games where streaks are sought after can be won with skill and patience alone, while ostensibly in Monster Train, even a player with a 95% win rate would require a few ended streaks before getting a streak of 20, and I'm not sure how good the best player is, but 95% seems quite high from my naive perspective, given how often the game can ruin one's plans.