How is cruciball in any way fun?

[Horolicht]

What is the most fun asepct of Peglin? For me it's using different orbs and having a unique experience every time playing. What I dislike even without playing cruciball is, that you have alot of stones in your inventory, which were already hard to get rid off and made a unique playthrough difficult. Choosing a different class isn't changing the amount of stones you get at the start.
So what is Cruciball doing? It gives you one additional stone, even nerfs the power of stones and gives you this purple little orb on top.
What does this all causes? You spend your gold to get rid off all the now useless stones and the purple orb. This causes you to have little to no gold investing into actually good additions to your equipment and you can't really do much else. You generally don't get the gold to get rid of everything useless AND building a good foundation to beat the first 2 stages. IF you can, than the 3rd stage might be possible to beat, but the final boss might stop you, even when easily sweeping through the 3rd stage.

I am no game designer by any means, but couldn't this be done better?
Having a challenging and fun experience is something other games achieve. Not this one.
Hitting your head against a brickwall is only fun for a while, in case you start doing that to begin with.

[lamenting spongebob]

I agree. The no starting+less total gold Cruciball level combined with the extra stone and the terriball are just obscenely BS to deal with. All cruciball levels on their own aren't terrible, but when you take into account all FIFTEEN levels STACK with each other, not to mention 5 levels going to be added in the future, it just turns into a horrid RNG grind. And the devs are doing absolutely nothing except adding MORE bloat into the pools which really annoys me.
It's such an incredible and fun experience hidden behind layers of terrible RNG and game design.
Normally I wouldn't complain, I would just play default mode, but having to push into cruciball 15 to get all the achievements is what makes it super frustrating.

[Horolicht]

Originally posted by Flammable Radish:

I agree. The no starting+less total gold Cruciball level combined with the extra stone and the terriball are just obscenely BS to deal with. All cruciball levels on their own aren't terrible, but when you take into account all FIFTEEN levels STACK with each other, not to mention 5 levels going to be added in the future, it just turns into a horrid RNG grind. And the devs are doing absolutely nothing except adding MORE bloat into the pools which really annoys me.
It's such an incredible and fun experience hidden behind layers of terrible RNG and game design.
Normally I wouldn't complain, I would just play default mode, but having to push into cruciball 15 to get all the achievements is what makes it super frustrating.

Got cruciball 15 with the standard class ages ago, but honestly cheesed some of cruciballs quite literally with bad cheese.
I currently leveled the other classes and now with cruciball 12 it's just not enjoyable. And when you finally have an enjoyable build, the game kicks you in the groin and you need to start over.
Funny is that even with the stone buffing relic, the stones are still useless in stage 3. So no matter what you do, you need to get rid of them over the course of the run, better early than later.

As you mentioned they'll add more of cruciballs. I don't know about others but Peglin is for me a "mind-off" game. I don't intend to go through something which I know causes aggression, when I just want to progress through something fun.

[The Face]

Yeah it's not interesting, just adds more of the bad parts for a difficulty

[Chitn]

the game was fun when it just came out. but theres SO MANY ORBS and new relics now it's so difficult to make a build on higher cruciballs. I havent seen a matryorbska orb in over a dozen runs

[tlenz]

Yeah. SO MANY of the relics and balls aren't just "less good" than some options, but legitimate traps on higher Cruciballs.

[PKblaze]

Personally I enjoy Cruciball as it's a challenge mode. Pebballs can be quite good depending on your build but I do wish other classes got different kit.

[yyflame]

Speaking as someone with 168 Hrs of peglin game time, cruciball 15 beaten for all classes, and all achievements,

Cruciball is one of the worst difficulty modifiers I have ever seen in a rouge-like game.
Y'all have pointed out some of it's faults but have missed it's most carnal sin, it completely ruins any potential for build diversity. The overwhelming majority of orbs simply cant keep up with the increased difficulty and become useless, requiring you to run the same builds over and over again. The game has about 100 orbs, its ridiculous that less than 10 of them are worth using in cruciball.

Obviously I love the game, but dear god cruciball is awful

[Horolicht]

Originally posted by yyflame:

Speaking as someone with 168 Hrs of peglin game time, cruciball 15 beaten for all classes, and all achievements,

Cruciball is one of the worst difficulty modifiers I have ever seen in a rouge-like game.
Y'all have pointed out some of it's faults but have missed it's most carnal sin, it completely ruins any potential for build diversity. The overwhelming majority of orbs simply cant keep up with the increased difficulty and become useless, requiring you to run the same builds over and over again. The game has about 100 orbs, its ridiculous that less than 10 of them are worth using in cruciball.

Obviously I love the game, but dear god cruciball is awful

It's kinda what I am hinting at, with saying that you always do the same, with the hope that the RNG is in your favor.

You don't feel any accomplishment when beating cruciball, but you would have that feeling if it's a properly constructed fun challenge.

[tilaron]

I like the challenge, sure RNG goes into it, but you can also end up with builds you would normally never consider. As with all things, you don't have to if you don't want to.

[ErikH2000]

A lot of this could be fixed with an encounter that lets you banish orb types for the run. That would put some strategy into the game and cut down on RNG. Imagine arriving at something with the layout of a shop, but all the items shown can be banished.

[Magmafrost]

For me, the game is ludicrously easy without cruciball, its basically impossible to lose. But mostly I just enjoy unlocking things

[yyflame]

Originally posted by Magmafrost:

For me, the game is ludicrously easy without cruciball, its basically impossible to lose. But mostly I just enjoy unlocking things

Honestly this is my biggest issue with cruciball. Without it the game is too easy, but with it its too hard. And its not a smooth increase of difficulty, cruciball goes from extremely easy to a difficult RNG fest within a couple levels. Theres no happy medium where the game is challenging but doesn't force you to go for a near perfect build

[Horolicht]

Cruciball being challenging isn't the issue. I like a good challenge. But a good challenge just feels different and nothing like cruciball.
It's not even really fun to use in custom games, since you can't choose specific cruciball levels for your run and if you want level 12 then you also need to have level 1-11. It probably would be nice to have more control over that.

[Ketrai]

The worst part about cruciball to me isn't the stones, or the terriball. It's the asenine nonsense that is removing a refresh from the board. I'm sorry but early game the level design is worse and a lot of levels have dead spots that are really hard to hit. And then the refresh just sits there, unable to be hit for 2-3 throws.

Even if you're really good at the game it's almost unavoidable that it'll happen some levels, and that just encourages lame savescumming.

Also, some orbs still need to be rebalanced badly. I'm sorry but the fact almost nothing does bonus damage against shields means you either get penetration orbs, or usually lose the game going into stage 2.

Stuff like the protectorb are just downright severely inferior versions of stuff like the new dodgeball. If I'm not having any ballwark relics or multiball, I don't see how a TINY bit of ballwark every 10-6 pegs is ever worth taking early on.

Also balladin still starts with an orb that gives him neither ballwark nor musircle so his relic is effectively dead until you find an orb that does.

[tlenz]

Yeah, and balladin isn't the only one like that. There are FAR too many relics or balls that are either useful IF you got another relic/ball or two that synergizes, or worse than useless if you don't. Too many of your picks end up in a coin toss.