Whats the point of poker

[Geck0]

If the NPCs just cheat anyway?
Is there some hidden way for me to cheat that I'm missing? Because the AI consistently get amazing hands and instantly fold for a 6c win on the rare occasion I have a better hand than them.

[Wayz]

ye old standard minigame time waster.
If it was high stakes it would have been worth it but playing for peanuts ....meh.

[Geck0]

Originally posted by Wayz:

ye old standard minigame time waster.
If it was high stakes it would have been worth it but playing for peanuts ....meh.

its not even playing for peanuts is my issue. it's just a time sink that you can't actually win anything from no matter how you play.

[katzenkrimis]

I hate card games in real life, so I refuse to participate in Read Dead poker.

I have played Dominos a few times, though. Just to relax for a while and participate in something different that the game has to offer. Change it up.

I haven't played Five Finger Fillet, either. It reminds me too much of the drinking game in Valhalla. It's all about timing, reflexes, hand-eye coordination. I'm great at that kind of stuff, but it gets tiring after you've played those types of mini-games for hundreds of hours.

[Geck0]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

I hate card games in real life, so I refuse to participate in Read Dead poker.

I have played Dominos a few times, though. Just to relax for a while and participate in something different that the game has to offer. Change it up.

I haven't played Five Finger Fillet, either. It reminds me too much of the drinking game in Valhalla. It's all about timing, reflexes, hand-eye coordination. I'm great at that kind of stuff, but it gets tiring after you've played those types of mini-games for hundreds of hours.

FFF is fine aside from the tiny value you get for it, from what I've seen of dominoes though it's just as unfair - lost 5 times in a row and each time I had no choice in what I played because I just had a ♥♥♥♥ hand.

[Twitchey]

The poker AI isn't great but if you have some patience you can see that there are some different "styles" that the computer plays with, loose and tight being the most obvious. And there are a few tricks that seem to work for most of the AI players, if they call once pre-flop for example they are very likely to also call a massive re-raise pre-flop, which can be exploited very often by betting them off the flop.

But there are hands where the AI knows it will have a better hand than you by the end and will just call you down no matter the tiny margin they might win by, so trying to excessively bully them doesn't work out very well usually.

So it can be pretty janky but I know from experience that you can beat them, if you don't have a lot of patience for it, try to force them into action pre-flop (make really big pre-flop raises and reraises), I have seen them call with losing hands plenty of times, enough to know that while sometimes they do call down the winners, they also call losing hands from that position.

[JuiceWSA]

The games aren't there for fun - Dominoes is kinda fun tho - and it's not about the money.

The games are there to Complete the Gambler Challenges, so you can fully upgrade your Stats. Gambler 8 is a particularly annoying one in that the odds of drawing a 5 Card Blackjack Winner and beating the dealer are - astronomical - and you have to do it 3 times. You'll sit there for DAYS - and hate every minute of it.

I've played enough of these games to know they aren't cheating - it's just random, like Gambling. After doing 8, Winning 3 hands of Poker in a row is a cake walk.

The Easiest way to play fff is just play the first guy in each location. If you can't spam W and A and win - I just don't know what to say.

Anywho - The Gambler Equipment is nice - it better be, considering what you have to go thru to get it...lol

[Swans]

I've not lost a game of poker yet (apart from timely folding on a couple of occasions when I knew my hand could never be good), but I have only played at Flathead Station thus far. The winnings are paltry however, that I do agree with.

[Geck0]

Originally posted by Swans:

I've not lost a game of poker yet, but I have only played at Flathead Station thus far. The winnings are paltry however, that I do agree with.

at many other locations, you'll likely get terrible hands more often than the ai will get worse than good hands.

[Wayz]

Originally posted by Swans:

I've not lost a game of poker yet (apart from timely folding on a couple of occasions when I knew my hand could never be good), but I have only played at Flathead Station thus far. The winnings are paltry however, that I do agree with.

Its not about winning or losing for me though its more of a case of wasting my ****ing time. if the take was 10x more it would be worth the bother, but even then there is only so much one can buy anyways but they could have made things interesting with high stakes being tangible vs high rollers. Chew through enough of their cash and their pride makes them put up a prize horse or a match pair of expensive pistols etc. They could even had dialogue tied to these high rollers and had some fun with it with story.
Having such pitiful gains just for the challenge as a gated unlock just made it even more annoying.

[Swans]

Originally posted by Wayz:

Originally posted by Swans:

I've not lost a game of poker yet (apart from timely folding on a couple of occasions when I knew my hand could never be good), but I have only played at Flathead Station thus far. The winnings are paltry however, that I do agree with.

Its not about winning or losing for me though its more of a case of wasting my ****ing time. if the take was 10x more it would be worth the bother, but even then there is only so much one can buy anyways but they could have made things interesting with high stakes being tangible vs high rollers. Chew through enough of their cash and their pride makes them put up a prize horse or a match pair of expensive pistols etc.
Having such pitiful gains just for the challenge unlock just made it even more annoying.

I've only played 10 hours but my initial impression is the game puts a lot of time-wasting mechanics your way to disguise the fact there's not much 'game' in there.

[Jason Wang Dang ✅]

Originally posted by Swans:

Originally posted by Wayz:

Its not about winning or losing for me though its more of a case of wasting my ****ing time. if the take was 10x more it would be worth the bother, but even then there is only so much one can buy anyways but they could have made things interesting with high stakes being tangible vs high rollers. Chew through enough of their cash and their pride makes them put up a prize horse or a match pair of expensive pistols etc.
Having such pitiful gains just for the challenge unlock just made it even more annoying.

I've only played 10 hours but my initial impression is the game puts a lot of time-wasting mechanics your way to disguise the fact there's not much 'game' in there.

you mean the horse riding simulator.

[Swans]

Originally posted by Jason Wang Dang ✅:

Originally posted by Swans:

I've only played 10 hours but my initial impression is the game puts a lot of time-wasting mechanics your way to disguise the fact there's not much 'game' in there.

you mean the horse riding simulator.

Yes, plus the overly-detailed mechanics, huge amounts of exposition through laborious cut-scenes, repeated animations, overt reliance on QTE, archaic control mechanism that surely the developers knew would just frustrate and slow down players.

So far, while I can appreciate the beauty and feel of the world building (I pretty much feel 'this is what the West was like'), it's a very cumbersome and outdated 'experience'. I can't really call it a game yet, more a theme park story experience. Overall it feels like something that was released 10-15 years ago, not in recent memory.

Poker is just one part of this problem, it often feels like a bunch of mini-games loosely strung together by the 'story', without an overall vision for the game itself. The story - so far anyway, I will accept that it could get more interesting if I invest some more time - is just western b-movie fodder, complete with disposable characters.

But I'll give it another go later and see if it improves, certainly glad I got it in the sale, it's definitely not worthy of full price by modern standards.

[Seijana]

Originally posted by JuiceWSA:

The Easiest way to play fff is just play the first guy in each location. If you can't spam W and A and win - I just don't know what to say.

You mustn't have played many rounds then, after two or three it mixes it up and spamming those combinations can get surprisingly difficult.

[Mister Breaker]

Another frustrating thing about the mini games is how long it can take due to the animations. The poker winning animation, even for chump change is always the same, the Blackjack dealer always takes the cards back, resets then deals, the dominoes being dealt and moved aside. Its draining and just adds to the time waste.

[Swans]

Originally posted by Mister Breaker:

Another frustrating thing about the mini games is how long it can take due to the animations. The poker winning animation, even for chump change is always the same, the Blackjack dealer always takes the cards back, resets then deals, the dominoes being dealt and moved aside. Its draining and just adds to the time waste.

Agreed, always a sign there's a lack of substance underneath the skin.

I do enjoy the feel of the open world in RDR2, I think it is a great depiction of the period (not that I was there!), but the game puts so much garbage in the way of it that I'm wondering if I can be bothered to continue.

I think tonight is my final roll of the dice with RDR2, to see if it can live up to its promises.