How is Vault of the Void not as popular as Slay the Spire?

[Blackcompany]

Granted I have only played the demo, but...this game is excellent. Just...really great. The backpack and deck manager. Gemstones and slotting. Providing you intel on enemies and deck tweaks before a fight. Choices of treasure or essence and souls...

This game takes all the best aspects of Hearthstone and Slay the Spire and puts them together into a single package. With a demo, no less.

Absolutely buying this!

[joesephjOSEPH]

its really solid

[Dabor]

A lot of reasons minor and major. It worth noting that StS was the one that popularized the RLDB genre, and at some point its popularity takes on a life of its own - people come to it for the consistent community, extensive mods, etc, and not because it's somehow the best in terms of baseline mechanics - by now I think there's a good dozen games that have comfortably outdone the vanilla StS experience, but the world is filled with media that are popular just because of a bandwagon snowball, and not because they're genuinely so incredibly good that even those who explicitly try to improve upon them utterly fail. Depending on what you want, whether it's whacky synergies, deliberate planning, risk management, etc, there's probably an RLDB that popped up in StS's wake that might be more specific to your tastes. But StS is the main one anyone casual would know about, and the *vast vast* majority of gamers, even in a genre like this, are very much casual.

That aside, Vault is very much intentionally leaning into being within a niche - the game has less RNG and more control and tighter balance, but all of those increase the skill floor and attention requirements. Keep in mind that even for a game leaning for a hardcore audience like Vault, maybe 15% of the actual audience is hardcore - in the general gaming milieu, that number is usually more like 5%.

A lot of people play video games at the end of the day to chill and see amusing stuff happen, and not because they wanna pay close attention to numbers and mechanics. Also, content creators of various types - who can form a lot of the effective marketing and viral spread for a game - generally have their hands forced by big snowbally communities. We've had a few people tell us they like the game but it just doesn't do as well on stream, so they play it on their own time instead. Runs are slower and more deliberate, the name itself is less likely to draw attention, etc, and all of that helps keep a game from breaking into the mainstream.

Obviously myself and Josh would've had a ton of discussions on this topic here and there over the decent few years it's been since EA, but it is worth mentioning we never really expected more than just "maybe be on the bigger side of a niche within a niche" - while getting onto mobile will hopefully help add some attention, we settled on having an up-front price precisely because of the knowledge that this isn't a game that'd appeal to casuals well and would just get butchered on reviews with any other attempt at monetization.

All that said, I'm really glad you like it - ultimately I worked on designing a bunch of Vault because I showed up one day as a player like you, back in closed beta like 7ish months before it entered EA - and really loved what it brought to the table. And while by now I'm biased, I hope it's only gotten better since. Having someone like you enjoy it goes a long way to justifying all that time spent. Feel free to hop on the discord if you ever wanna chat more about it - the community isn't big or anything, but there's a few friendly regulars who'll actively respond if you wanna discuss anything.

Thanks again for the kind words.

[Divine Shield]

VotV is an absolute Masterpiece in my mind. I say this not to boast (as I don't like to boast), but instead, to illustrate my love for this game. I am at 784 hours played and have all 220 achievements. I have been gaming since I was a kid and the Atari 2600 came out, so I've been around a long time. Vault is by far my favorite game, hands down. I am hoping for more content someday. Perhaps new classes and new boss encounters and hopefully more challenge coins, as they provide me more incentive to keep coming back to Vault. I am currently replaying some challenge coins to achieve them on other available classes. I also encourage anyone reading this to check out The_Breakshift on YouTube and watch his videos playing at max i50 difficulty. They are superb, very entertaining, and can really help a player become better at this game. I'm in the process of re-watching every single video as I like them very much and have some time on my hands. I thank Josh, Dabor, Bugphobia, Breakshift, and likely others that I don't know about, for this wonderful game! Cheers to you all!

[Dabor]

The 5th class is almost definitely coming and I'm pretty happy with the ideas we have for it so far. As for new enemies: hopefully. Tbh there's been a few rough designs that even have art for them sitting around for years and they just keep getting put off to the side. Hopefully one of these days we get to finalize them. T_T

[FireDragonDoL]

Originally posted by Dabor:

The 5th class is almost definitely coming and I'm pretty happy with the ideas we have for it so far. As for new enemies: hopefully. Tbh there's been a few rough designs that even have art for them sitting around for years and they just keep getting put off to the side. Hopefully one of these days we get to finalize them. T_T

I have a friend who's very hardcore deck builder and he stated "what brings me back to slay the spire is the boss design". Make what you want out of it though, I repeatedly dropped slay the spire and ate VotV instead. What I really appreciate about VotV is the extreme focus on combo-ing, from the get-go, all the way to the insane combos at the end of the game. Makes me feel powerful, really cool.

I do have to say from my perspective, I wasn't into VotV with the first class though. I got into VotV only at the third class, when I started punching into the future :)

[Rabid]

Personally I don't see VotV as being a deckbuilder in the same vein as StS simply because in VotV the majority of card choices you make aren't random, you're not having to regularly reevaluate your "how will I beat the game" strategy after every fight, and while you do get random relics and shop purchases, you almost always will see 1-3 cards per floor which are deck defining and specifically aim for those cards so you roughly know what your endgame strategy is going to look like even if you bolt stuff on to it later. Meanwhile, VotV gives the player more options when it comes to actually playing your deck through fights thanks to purging and holding cards. This makes VotV less about deck construction than StS (and basically every other RLDB I've played) and more about battle tactics and map route selection.

I have a personal opinion that when it comes to these sorts of games, those with a higher degree of unpredictability tend to be more popular; VotV is a bit of an outlier in that it explicitly gives the player a ton of information to work with up front instead of gradually feeding you new, randomised goodies after every fight

[Dabor]

To be honest there's still a pretty damn high degree of randomness, and your "keep looking for win conditions" is something I've seen experienced players do a LOT, routing specifically into things that involve unknowns (like chests, shops, card pack) because they think their deck doesn't have a good end-game plan and trying to scrape together whatever they can.

I can definitely agree that it's less random and that the deck construction challenges don't hit you quite as hard and fast, but at least as a designer I've been satisfied with the degree to which I see experienced players engage with it. We've had 20 minute discussions over a single card upgrade choice. :D

[Rabid]

Originally posted by Dabor:

To be honest there's still a pretty damn high degree of randomness, and your "keep looking for win conditions" is something I've seen experienced players do a LOT, routing specifically into things that involve unknowns (like chests, shops, card pack) because they think their deck doesn't have a good end-game plan and trying to scrape together whatever they can.

I can definitely agree that it's less random and that the deck construction challenges don't hit you quite as hard and fast, but at least as a designer I've been satisfied with the degree to which I see experienced players engage with it. We've had 20 minute discussions over a single card upgrade choice. :D

Don't get me wrong, I really like it! I think the balance of stuff you get to see in advance and plan for vs. times where you are just rolling the dice is more or less perfect. I find the total lack of ability to plan your deck development in most RLDBs to be a real turn off. But I also think that there's a lot of players who particularly enjoy that feeling of delving into the unknown and not having even the vaguest idea of what the game will offer them.

That makes me think that a fun challenge coin would be a mode where you don't get any regular card rewards, but get STS-style card picks instead... (unless that exists already and I missed it)

[Dabor]

We actually discussed a challenge coin like that a while back (maybe 2 years now?), called something like "I'd Rather Be Playing..." The problem was we got more and more ideas of what we'd wanna tweak to make it "work" and end up shelving the idea since there was always something else more demanding of our attention since.

[ÐemøN]

I just purchased on mobile (which is like 2x the price in my currency thanks to ♥♥♥♥ pricing from Google) and this game is truly fantastic.

The combos and class variance keeps things fresh (please add more monsters in the future!), while the purge and retain mechanics give you much more control over combat (something that I absolutely hate in Slay the Spire).

I will eventually purchase this on steam as well to support you guys (along with the supporter pack that you released).

I look forward to a DLC with more monsters!

PS: Please keep the mobile version up to date with the PC one, a lot of mobile games go neglected and deckbuilders are much better played on the go.

[Dabor]

Originally posted by ÐemøN:

I just purchased on mobile (which is like 2x the price in my currency thanks to ♥♥♥♥ pricing from Google) and this game is truly fantastic.

The combos and class variance keeps things fresh (please add more monsters in the future!), while the purge and retain mechanics give you much more control over combat (something that I absolutely hate in Slay the Spire).

I will eventually purchase this on steam as well to support you guys (along with the supporter pack that you released).

I look forward to a DLC with more monsters!

PS: Please keep the mobile version up to date with the PC one, a lot of mobile games go neglected and deckbuilders are much better played on the go.

Thanks a bunch for your support! Our current short-term plans are still releasing stuff for free, although of course that might change later down the line, be it a future class or something like more enemies. But for now you shouldn't expect it in the near future - part of the reason for the supporter pack is to give people a way to toss something extra for all the free updates.

[Blackcompany]

Originally posted by Dabor:

A lot of reasons minor and major. It worth noting that StS was the one that popularized the RLDB genre, and at some point its popularity takes on a life of its own - people come to it for the consistent community, extensive mods, etc, and not because it's somehow the best in terms of baseline mechanics - by now I think there's a good dozen games that have comfortably outdone the vanilla StS experience, but the world is filled with media that are popular just because of a bandwagon snowball, and not because they're genuinely so incredibly good that even those who explicitly try to improve upon them utterly fail. Depending on what you want, whether it's whacky synergies, deliberate planning, risk management, etc, there's probably an RLDB that popped up in StS's wake that might be more specific to your tastes. But StS is the main one anyone casual would know about, and the *vast vast* majority of gamers, even in a genre like this, are very much casual.

That aside, Vault is very much intentionally leaning into being within a niche - the game has less RNG and more control and tighter balance, but all of those increase the skill floor and attention requirements. Keep in mind that even for a game leaning for a hardcore audience like Vault, maybe 15% of the actual audience is hardcore - in the general gaming milieu, that number is usually more like 5%.

A lot of people play video games at the end of the day to chill and see amusing stuff happen, and not because they wanna pay close attention to numbers and mechanics. Also, content creators of various types - who can form a lot of the effective marketing and viral spread for a game - generally have their hands forced by big snowbally communities. We've had a few people tell us they like the game but it just doesn't do as well on stream, so they play it on their own time instead. Runs are slower and more deliberate, the name itself is less likely to draw attention, etc, and all of that helps keep a game from breaking into the mainstream.

Obviously myself and Josh would've had a ton of discussions on this topic here and there over the decent few years it's been since EA, but it is worth mentioning we never really expected more than just "maybe be on the bigger side of a niche within a niche" - while getting onto mobile will hopefully help add some attention, we settled on having an up-front price precisely because of the knowledge that this isn't a game that'd appeal to casuals well and would just get butchered on reviews with any other attempt at monetization.

All that said, I'm really glad you like it - ultimately I worked on designing a bunch of Vault because I showed up one day as a player like you, back in closed beta like 7ish months before it entered EA - and really loved what it brought to the table. And while by now I'm biased, I hope it's only gotten better since. Having someone like you enjoy it goes a long way to justifying all that time spent. Feel free to hop on the discord if you ever wanna chat more about it - the community isn't big or anything, but there's a few friendly regulars who'll actively respond if you wanna discuss anything.

Thanks again for the kind words.

Thanks for this awesome response. I will see if I cannot find some time for the Discord soon. And for another run of Vault. My first was a blast!

[ÐemøN]

Originally posted by Dabor:

Thanks a bunch for your support! Our current short-term plans are still releasing stuff for free, although of course that might change later down the line, be it a future class or something like more enemies. But for now you shouldn't expect it in the near future - part of the reason for the supporter pack is to give people a way to toss something extra for all the free updates.

Looking forward to new content (both class and monsters). Thanks for the reply. I will be buying the supporter pack soon enough as well.

[some guy]

Originally posted by Dabor:

A lot of reasons minor and major. It worth noting that StS was the one that popularized the RLDB genre, and at some point its popularity takes on a life of its own - people come to it for the consistent community, extensive mods, etc, and not because it's somehow the best in terms of baseline mechanics - by now I think there's a good dozen games that have comfortably outdone the vanilla StS experience, but the world is filled with media that are popular just because of a bandwagon snowball, and not because they're genuinely so incredibly good that even those who explicitly try to improve upon them utterly fail. Depending on what you want, whether it's whacky synergies, deliberate planning, risk management, etc, there's probably an RLDB that popped up in StS's wake that might be more specific to your tastes. But StS is the main one anyone casual would know about, and the *vast vast* majority of gamers, even in a genre like this, are very much casual.

That explanation is surprising to me. I dont know any game of which I would say it has "better baseline mechanics" than sts. its not just optionality, its about how complexity translates to gameplay. e.g. having more keywords or more systems obviously doesnt make a better game. i think vault of the void has some very smart mechanics and from what i played so far it works out pretty well *but* sts is one of the best games of the last 10 yrs and exemplary in almost every regard. i would say one of the reasons sts is more popular is that its a lot easier to learn and more directly fun to play. can you give like 3 examples of games you think are mechanically "better"?

i mean being too taxing on the old flesh cpu might be some of a reason a game is less popular. like i think gloomhaven is the best tactics game ever made but every person i tried to play it with gave up after 3 sessions and i understand why: every decision is a tradeoff and there are only few sanity checks for over analyzing. in a similar sense you could say its part of the reason into the breach is less popular than ftl but i dont think its all of the reasons. besides popularity, being first, having a good mix of chance and strategy the game has a very good "time to fun" and a very nice run dramaturgy. I guess that still gives the option of having "worse mechanics" but I would argue that you cant look at the mechanics isolated of its context in the full game experience.

So yeah Im really interested in seeing some games you think are "better" (or just mechanically great) because I think i looked at most card games and for me its STS then probably Monster Train and then everything else.

[some guy]

Also, if you reply, maybe add some words on what makes a mechanic better/worse because depending on definition we might simply agree on this point.