Too many items/symbols for reliable play.

[Tol'kaed]

So i've been keeping track of how many win/loses i've gotten in this game because as a dice rolling game it would be important to know what my general chances of winning were before eventually jumping ship and uninstalling the game. i figured that as more items and symbols got added that eventually the chances of actually winning a run would get so ridiculously low that there'd no longer be a point in playing. I've gotten to 100 games after the last update and after tallying my W/L I've gotten 3W/97L. While in the previous updates i had 20+ wins in the first 100 games.

I get that luck is in the name, but this is a problem. I was having a pretty decent amount of fun before, but now it's rare that i'm getting past the 3rd payment. I want to keep following the game because it was simple fun before, but playing it doesn't exactly seem worth the time anymore. It might just be really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ luck, but when you can have 60 losses in a row because nothing interacts with each other anymore it gets hard to keep playing.

[rexalian2000]

i've been having about a 1/4 win rate on this patch. but in order to do that i've had to basically ignore many strategies that used to work. basically anything other than suits, cultists, or geologist/mrsfruit/pirate/eldritch no longer seems to work more or less ever without perfect rng. Even flowers is nearly impossible to do without at least a couple suns and clear skies which is obviously very hard to pull together.
I've been able to win but it is a lot less fun when things like a destroy build, ore build or fruit build no longer seem to work and most symbols are just dead weight now after week 4 or 5.

[dholland]

I've been winning a lot less, too. I can still win on floor 9, but it takes a while and isn't my idea of fun. Back on floor 1, I get wins maybe 1 in 4, but I don't record an exact total. The dev knows about this issue and is thinking about how to address it. It's not obvious how you can do so in a simple way. All games like this tend to have similar issues, probability being what it is. So perhaps it would be useful to give suggestions. Personally, I'd like to have a luck multiplier system that applies to items. Yes, there are the items Instant Ramen and Comfy Pillow, but most games you won't see either, and pillow is no use unless you've already made the next rent, at which point you don't need it to win anyway, except for true infinite endless runs :-) That would help a bit to give the player more control. One idea would be to have a rare symbol which only scores 2 and gives you 1 more symbol to choose from after the spin if it appears on your board, or gives you an extra set of 3 symbols to choose from like Frozen Pizza. You could slowly add more of this symbol to your board and increase your symbol choice options. Or, you could have tokens with rent payments which you can use to get an extra symbol.

[rexalian2000]

i would love to see something that increases player agency at the start of the run. maybe a draft of a set of rare symbols guarenteed after week 1 so you have something to build against. or some kind of starting choice that effects either items or symbols that appear ( similar to neow in STS giving you a starting choice that effects the run).

[Hruberen]

another option would be to limit item sets like tribes in Hearthstone Battlegrounds.

In battlegrounds you're buying random minions from the shop to fight with that have a variety of tribes, but there are only ever 5 tribes per game, even though with the latest update there'll be 8 tribes total.

So however many item sets were in last patch or the patch before could be the limit, and which ones selected for each game are random.

[Tol'kaed]

Not a bad collection of ideas, makes me feel kinda like i'm just complaining. Another option could be a item Ban system. Give us a screen at the start where we can optionally ban a number of symbols equal to the floor number? That way the floor progression, while still able to act as a challenge system, can serve as a way to edge closer and closer to some of the funner builds we might think of.

[MrQueasy]

Yeah, an equivalent of the Nethack "scroll of genocide" item might be cool! Maybe a rare capsule?

[PRinciple prickley!?!?!]

Originally posted by Hruberen:

another option would be to limit item sets like tribes in Hearthstone Battlegrounds.

In battlegrounds you're buying random minions from the shop to fight with that have a variety of tribes, but there are only ever 5 tribes per game, even though with the latest update there'll be 8 tribes total.

So however many item sets were in last patch or the patch before could be the limit, and which ones selected for each game are random.

That's a fantastic idea!

[dholland]

I think there are too many symbols to ban. An alternative would be a mechanism, perhaps a rare item, which lets you choose a symbol from your current deck and then gives you a better chance, maybe 20%, of that symbol being offered. You could have a common item that does this for a common symbol, uncommon item for an uncommon, etc. Synergies mainly need multiple copies of 1 symbol so get less likely as more symbols are added.

[Kaziglu Bey]

I completely agree that the range of possible choices (and the fact that more are going to be added) means that there's a lot of noise and it's basically (almost) pure luck as it currently stands. Adding RNG mitigation is important just so the game doesn't feel like its playing itself.

Increase symbol and item draft choices from 3 to 5. Not only does it thematically fit the board, it adds a degree of RNG mitigation that's currently missing, in particular with items since you can't use rerolls and can get offered utter drek fairly consistently in the three-pick.

[Silyon]

It's not just me then, I'm well aware my luck is garbage tier and expected that my current loss streak was merely a manifestation of that. Either that or playing exclusively on Floor 9, either or.

More symbols will be added as the game progresses, and as we've seen with Cats and Robin Hood, old symbols can get entirely new abilities. I do feel that trend needs to continue, there's quite a lot of 1 or 0 coin symbols that do literally nothing and interact only with one highly specific item or symbol, and are therefore not worth taking unless you've already gotten that one (and often weak) synergy. Dogs come to mind, as do Pearls and Coins. Pretty much anything the Diver eats may as well be a blank for that matter, they're all slow money and pay out way too little over way too many turns to be worth taking, even if you've got the Diver already. And don't get me started on birds, can't count the number of times I've been offered three symbols in the early game that all give near 0 and do nothing with no future synergy.

I feel like as the game progresses some kind of weighting system needs to be implemented. Tribes were mentioned, but sounds too generic and carries the potential to lead to very "samey" runs if too broad or literally unwinnable runs if too narrow. Rather, I'd go for a system where symbols or items that synergize with one another are tagged, and every symbol or item in your reels that share a tag increases the odds of similarly-tagged symbols or items showing up by X%. This provides some much-needed control over how your game progresses without completely removing the luck factor.

[Jonius7]

The main problems with the symbols
- the game needs more synergies to make worthless/hindering symbols worth it (eg: Pearl, Anchor)
- while at the same time, said synergies that you want, are too rare to pick up.
- several existing items/symbols need buffs.

So what happens is that you are always grabbing the same symbols to win. Mouse and Cat are decent 1G symbols because they have the payoff of Cheese and Milk, Monkey has multiple synergies, but other symbols aren't so lucky.

Then there's the gold scaling issue, where even if you were lucky enough to get the right items and symbols to make something relevant, 3G per symbol just isn't cutting it in the late game.

And since you don't have that much flexibility changing your inventory, you're stuck with those symbols for a loss.

I want to be playing with more "viable" symbols but they are just bad, or their synergy items are too rare/don't scale past 3G per symbol.

[TechRabbit]

Originally posted by Jonius7:

The main problems with the symbols
- the game needs more synergies to make worthless/hindering symbols worth it (eg: Pearl, Anchor)
- while at the same time, said synergies that you want, are too rare to pick up.
- several existing items/symbols need buffs.

So what happens is that you are always grabbing the same symbols to win. Mouse and Cat are decent 1G symbols because they have the payoff of Cheese and Milk, Monkey has multiple synergies, but other symbols aren't so lucky.

Then there's the gold scaling issue, where even if you were lucky enough to get the right items and symbols to make something relevant, 3G per symbol just isn't cutting it in the late game.

And since you don't have that much flexibility changing your inventory, you're stuck with those symbols for a loss.

I want to be playing with more "viable" symbols but they are just bad, or their synergy items are too rare/don't scale past 3G per symbol.

The pearl has several good synergies

[spike_mf]

There needs to be something more the player could do to influence outcomes

[Jonius7]

Originally posted by TechRabbit:

The pearl has several good synergies

None of them are good. Oyster that produces 1G Pearls is a liability. You are highly reliant on Geologist and Diver, which I've only seen a couple of times. And Diver just removes the Oyster anyway.

Point being, you are removing Pearl with your Removal Tokens more than 70% of the time. Coin is also really bad, even with the x3 Gold item. See if you can get Midas as well while not falling behind in rent.

Originally posted by Jonius7:

I want to be playing with more "viable" symbols but they are just bad, or their synergy items are too rare/don't scale past 3G per symbol.

[Silyon]

Originally posted by Jonius7:

Originally posted by TechRabbit:

The pearl has several good synergies

None of them are good. Oyster that produces 1G Pearls is a liability. You are highly reliant on Geologist and Diver, which I've only seen a couple of times. And Diver just removes the Oyster anyway.

To add on, yes it does get doubled via Dame and affected by Cleaning Cloth, one of which is a rare symbol like Geologist and Diver while the other is an uncommon item you can't get out of item capsules. It's also worth the least of the various things both those methods multiply, and therefore the first to be removed even before the Shiny Pebble. Pearl is all but worthless unless you already have a geologist (specifically) to feed.