I don't get why people complain about difficulty

[Sombrero]

This post is not meant to be a "Git gud" post whatsoever, like at all.

But I genuinely don't get why people think the game is too hard? I could argue that some elements of the game are imbalanced (a few examples include mushroom to feel way stronger than overburn and bombs, teeth, smackback and aimless can feel extremely unfair especially on that bloody cat boss fight, I don't think it's fair to have ink only accessible to Gnomes baseline, I get that the base tribe can survive just by having a ton of hp but the summoners really can't do anything against a lot of mechanics and you can lose a run on a stupid aimless that nuke your key unit(s) more often than not).

Anyway back on topic: I think people just need to try to understand how the game actually works and stop trying to force strategies from other games into this game. You are meant to move your units on almost every single turn, putting your companions back in your deck very regularly to heal them and cleanse their negative effects and so on. Sure if you play this like Hearthstone and "just" play one card per turn you will be bodied like there's no tomorrow and the game will feel too hard.

But it's kind of like saying Mario Kart is too hard when you play without items. You are meant to use the tools the game is giving to you (and introducing them clearly in the tutorial by the way, it's not like any of this is hidden or anything).

Again I think there's some imbalance in the game and I'd rather people point that out (the "hard setting" is too random and half fo the time makes the game easier for you and suddenly nuke your run because a stupid pushroom is way behind and has 8 shield and will murder your entire team very quickly).

Also I simply don't get why difficulty should be a negative in the first place? It took me a good 7-8 hours of game time to finally win my first run and I've won about 4 other since (one including on a new savefile on Switch on the second run so it's not even that you need to unlock a lot of things to win necessarily, even though that does help).

Just think about all the game mechanics and use them. If you feel some things are way too weak or too strong by all mean give constructive criticism to the devs but review bombing the game because you can't be bothered thinking in a strategy game is just ridiculous at this point. There are way way way harder games out there. Sure Wildfrost isn't far from easy but it's not crazy hardcore or crazy unfair either, far from it. (And I consider myself pretty average at card games in the first place, I always go for the troll strategy instead of trying to min-max).

[KraashTest]

Originally posted by Zanaki:

Originally posted by Oswald:

Spelunky is a prime example of hard and unfair games where a single mistake can end your run (or just be unlucky and die randomly even if no mistakes are made). It is much more unfair than Wildfrost. Yet not many people complain about this, and few of them actually leave bad reviews.

I don't think the massive waves of bad reviews are really due to issues of the game. It might be marketing, people's expectations, or whatever reason.

Spelunky is unfair if you're new or don't know what you're doing. Sometimes you can get killed by jank, but most deaths are your fault. Wildfrost you're often dead if a particular enemy pops up on the screen and you don't have something to counter it.

Well then no wildfrost is basically the same. With no challenge bell you can win every (or nearly every) game.

Aimless yetis are not that unmanageable compared to what everybody is saying.
I agree about the teeth+aimless cats. It's one of the most dangerous fight in the game for me. But even then I'm getting way better and consistent at dealing with them.

Dread bell with the random charms can indeed be brutal with bad luck. But I'm fine with it as it's an hard mode, and it can change the way to deal with a fight, making it a "cheap" way to bring more variety. If you say you got rng-screwed because you lost in a harder than usual but manageable fight, no, it's on you. And people are quick to calling things impossible and blaming the game for their mistakes.
I would be fine with some adjustments to prevent (or limit) some charms on some specific monsters, to both avoid the hardest stuff, but also some weak combination to compensate. Not sure it would make the experience much better tho.

You perfectly know what the enemies are doing. You can check the cards left in your drawing pile. You have a ton of options with how to reposition companion and play cards. You can (and should) plan 2 or 3 turns in advance, not just the next one and pray it was a good decision on a general game plan

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by Oswald:

Spelunky is a prime example of hard and unfair games where a single mistake can end your run (or just be unlucky and die randomly even if no mistakes are made). It is much more unfair than Wildfrost. Yet not many people complain about this, and few of them actually leave bad reviews.

I don't think the massive waves of bad reviews are really due to issues of the game. It might be marketing, people's expectations, or whatever reason.

I love Spelunky, it's not the same thing at all. Spelunky is an action game that has a learning curve, and at the end of the learning curve good players can win Spelunky runs back to back to back. Mistakes can be deadly but Spelunky rewards skill. Yes you can die to a trap the first time you see it, that's sort of the premise of the game, you're exploring and figuring out a terrifying maze-like dungeon... the next time you find the same trap, now you know what it does. A player that knows the game will not run into unfair situations. A comparable mechanic is Wildfrost's phase 2 bosses, it is completely fair for Bamboozle to split into Bam and Boozle even though it can force an unexpected loss on a new player, because they learned something and next time they can see it coming.
Wildfrost is different, it throws you into situations where you really don't have answers sometimes no matter how good at the game you are. If you do end up having a godrun the game usually harshly punishes you by making the next boss insanely hard to beat. It is not the player's fault if all 3 Leaders offered are weak. It is not the player's fault if they seek out charms like they should and the game keeps giving them awful ones or situational ones that don't work with their cards. It is not the player's fault if Marrow and Smog spawn in the same row and their characters refuse to hit Marrow. It is not the player's fault if the only good companions they're offered are Teeth companions, which will make the final boss of their next run unfair to beat without significant luck. It is not the player's fault if truly awful nodes like the gnome stranger spawn over good nodes. It is not the player's fault if they are never offered a counter to an upcoming boss before they reach it. It is not the player's fault if the shop spawns while they're at 79 bling after they did everything they could to acquire bling, and then doesn't spawn again for a long time, leaving them without access to crowns. It is not the player's fault if they use Dread Bell and a teeth charm spawns on an incredibly tanky enemy unit, and no you can't justify this away by saying "its ok for strategy games to force losses on you", that's not a strategy game it's roulette.

[Firellius]

The problem with 'difficulty', in my opinion, is that without proper skill expression, it becomes all-consuming and can break a game's entire genre. Wildfrost isn't quite that far yet, but it does lose out a bit for it.

You know the saying 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'? There should be one in game design for 'any sufficiently difficult game is indistinguishable from a puzzle game'. This works, IMO, in the combats themselves. The way those play out is fantastically challenging in a skillful way and really does shake things up within the deckbuilder genre. Most deckbuilders I can blaze through my turn but here I often find myself stopping to consider a wider variety of options. It's fun that a lot of cards can work on both sides of the field too, like speeding up an enemy's turn so they'll trigger something that gets another unit taken out before they can act. Like playing DotA2's Oracle, my favourite.

But Wildfrost does lose out between battles, on the actual deckbuilder component. There's quite a few good cards, sure, but there's also a ton of junk that you'll rarely want to pick up, and some that you will, statistically speaking, never want to pick up. The encounters also present a very clear-cut path to victory, being much more of a 'hard-counter' design than even StS's bosses. (The Timekeeper counter spammer decks, the Creature counters power-building, and Donu and Deca counter slow, defensive builds, but none of them are oppressive to the point of 'if you bring X deck, you lose')

This leads to all the decks having to be some kind of balance of all possible encounters and strategies, so you're more looking at finding the right puzzle pieces to fix potential upcoming encounters than looking at optimising the strategy you -want- to play.

I like Bom, but it's very inefficient. I like Shroom, but it's very inefficient. I like Junk-bombing, but it's very inefficient.

Doing janky, funny strategies is kind of out of the question on Wildfrost simply because you'll get an encounter that's just going to end your fun at some point. Which is a damn shame, because the battles themselves are incredibly fun to play!

And, as mentioned before, the RNG is cosniderably heavier in this game than in others, so not all of your losses are your fault, either.

[Postman Pat]

>when you get to Yak and 2 of them spawn with 4 teeth charms
GG it's over

[crgmyster]

Originally posted by Totopo:

I love Spelunky, it's not the same thing at all. Spelunky is an action game that has a learning curve, and at the end of the learning curve good players can win Spelunky runs back to back to back. Mistakes can be deadly but Spelunky rewards skill. Yes you can die to a trap the first time you see it, that's sort of the premise of the game, you're exploring and figuring out a terrifying maze-like dungeon... the next time you find the same trap, now you know what it does. A player that knows the game will not run into unfair situations. A comparable mechanic is Wildfrost's phase 2 bosses, it is completely fair for Bamboozle to split into Bam and Boozle even though it can force an unexpected loss on a new player, because they learned something and next time they can see it coming.
Wildfrost is different, it throws you into situations where you really don't have answers sometimes no matter how good at the game you are. If you do end up having a godrun the game usually harshly punishes you by making the next boss insanely hard to beat. It is not the player's fault if all 3 Leaders offered are weak. It is not the player's fault if they seek out charms like they should and the game keeps giving them awful ones or situational ones that don't work with their cards. It is not the player's fault if Marrow and Smog spawn in the same row and their characters refuse to hit Marrow. It is not the player's fault if the only good companions they're offered are Teeth companions, which will make the final boss of their next run unfair to beat without significant luck. It is not the player's fault if truly awful nodes like the gnome stranger spawn over good nodes. It is not the player's fault if they are never offered a counter to an upcoming boss before they reach it. It is not the player's fault if the shop spawns while they're at 79 bling after they did everything they could to acquire bling, and then doesn't spawn again for a long time, leaving them without access to crowns. It is not the player's fault if they use Dread Bell and a teeth charm spawns on an incredibly tanky enemy unit, and no you can't justify this away by saying "its ok for strategy games to force losses on you", that's not a strategy game it's roulette.

The major assumption here is that a truly skilled player can win every run of Spelunky but the same is not true for Wildfrost. How do you know what the apex of skill looks like in Wildfrost looks like? Is your play so perfect that you know with certainty your runs are unwinnable due to bad RNG? I find this extraordinarily hard to believe considering the game was literally just released.

There are already plenty of instances of people with substantial win rates or win streaks. For instance, this youtuber is already on a 5 win streak while going for true ending wins https://youtu.be/ZEa_86N9ID0?t=5136. I predict that 1) as people get better at the game we are going to see crazier and crazier win streaks and win rates and 2) even if literally 100% of runs aren't winnable the vast majority of runs will end up being beatable with perfect play.

[Omnipresent Oatmeal]

Originally posted by crgmyster:

with perfect play

That is the problem.
Right there.

As it stands, right now, the game punishes mistakes incredibly hard, which compounds very poorly with the rather narrow RNG and reward drops.

Far too many cards are useful in only specific situations, meaning they do nothing but dilute the drop pool and your deck outside of that one exact scenario. Charms are even worse, with certain charms only being at all useful on certain cards, meaning an unfortunate charm drop like the -2 Attack requires you to then get one of a very small set of cards to get any value from that charm.

Skill expression is fine.
Requiring perfect play for, as you put it, "the vast majority of runs" is less than fine.

[crgmyster]

Originally posted by Omnipresent Oatmeal:

Skill expression is fine.
Requiring perfect play for, as you put it, "the vast majority of runs" is less than fine.

I think you misunderstood what I am saying there. If you play perfectly, you should win almost every run. This does not mean that in a typical run you would need to always play perfectly. You just need to make mostly reasonable decisions. I have won many runs so far and have misplayed multiple times in all of those wins.

The reason I brought up the ideal of achieving perfect play was that people are complaining about losing due to RNG not skill. However, if people are making mistakes in their runs that would otherwise be wins without those errors, then it is their lack of skill that is causing them to lose. Because, no one is playing the game perfectly (or even close to perfectly I would think), they have no right to complain about bad RNG because their skill is still lacking.

[Omnipresent Oatmeal]

Originally posted by crgmyster:

they have no right to complain about bad RNG because their skill is still lacking.

False.

First: not to hop on the "aimless bad" bandwagon, but I do have a major gripe with it that I have with all chance-to-hit mechanics.
Aimless, based on the tooltip, is assumed to be an even chance to hit any one target in the opposing row - aimless against a 2-target row is a 50% chance to hit either of them, down to a 33% chance to hit any of three targets. If we want to be specific, a 1/n chance to hit any target in the opposite row, where n is the number of targets in that opposite row.
While the chance to have aimless enemies hit the same target multiple times does decrease as the # of hits increases, I have lost multiple times specifically because of having to gamble on a 50/50 against aimless enemies. 50% chance hitting the same thing 4 times in a row is not unheard of, but that kind of bad RNG does compound with other problems.
While yes, the fact that I've had to take those gambles is invariably a result of prior mistakes and I will acknowledge that I do not play perfectly, minor mistakes should not result in my options being "instant loss" or "survive one more turn and then lose" thanks to three enemies on the board having aimless and all hitting for 5+.


Second: bad RNG just isn't fun and, more importantly, is generally incompatible with skill expression to a certain degree. My interest in getting better at a game generally decreases as the rate of bad RNG increases. Getting a series of unfortunate drops, like the -2 Attack charm as opposed to almost anything else, means I have to play that much better to just break even and win, which gets less and less enjoyable the more it happens. Rather than getting something that improves my deck, I got a drop that is deadweight in almost every situation and will not benefit me for the upcoming combat.

[crgmyster]

Originally posted by Omnipresent Oatmeal:

Originally posted by crgmyster:

they have no right to complain about bad RNG because their skill is still lacking.

False, for multiple reasons.

Yea I regret my phrasing there. People have a right to complain for whatever reason. That said, if people think they are losing due to RNG and not a lack of skill, they are just wrong.

I think the examples you listed are great because they highlight why so many people think they are losing to RNG not skill. If you are in a situation where an aimless 50/50 would lose you the fight, the mistake already happened. You messed up in the way you built your deck, you messed up in the way you placed your crowns and charms, or you messed up in the way you've played out the fight. The next time you lose to what you perceive to be bad RNG, ask yourself what decisions you made that put you in that position. I think you will find that 1) there is almost always a way you could have avoided the bad RNG with better play and 2) you will improve dramatically as a player by acknowledging your mistakes instead of just blaming bad luck.

[Omnipresent Oatmeal]

Originally posted by crgmyster:

That said, if people think they are losing due to RNG and not a lack of skill,

It's a combination of both.
Lack of skill results in a mistake. Game punishes you for it in whatever way ends up happening.
The RNG can very easily compound that mistake out of your control, even if you play perfectly afterwards.

Originally posted by crgmyster:

The next time you lose to what you perceive to be bad RNG

Will be for a completely different set of reasons with a largely different deck.
Probably my most common loss is because I grab a leader with below 8 health. Sure, that's my fault for picking them, but I can't realistically expect to get Bamboozle as 1st boss every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time and for him to also have spawns on the board with a particularly unfortunate set of charms.
I also remember seeing Truffle spawn with a charm that gave him frenzy. I don't think I need to explain why 4 Truffles having frenzy is a slight complication in what was an otherwise perfect run. My fault for making copious use of Overburn that run since I kept getting cards that made use of it, I guess.

[Firellius]

Originally posted by crgmyster:

Originally posted by Omnipresent Oatmeal:

Skill expression is fine.
Requiring perfect play for, as you put it, "the vast majority of runs" is less than fine.

I think you misunderstood what I am saying there. If you play perfectly, you should win almost every run. This does not mean that in a typical run you would need to always play perfectly. You just need to make mostly reasonable decisions. I have won many runs so far and have misplayed multiple times in all of those wins.

The reason I brought up the ideal of achieving perfect play was that people are complaining about losing due to RNG not skill. However, if people are making mistakes in their runs that would otherwise be wins without those errors, then it is their lack of skill that is causing them to lose. Because, no one is playing the game perfectly (or even close to perfectly I would think), they have no right to complain about bad RNG because their skill is still lacking.

There's a certain limit to how much 'skill' can be expected of a player before they cease to be a player though. It's not much of a game if all choices have already been made for me.

If every card draw is a matter of 'pick option X/Y/Z or lose', then does the game really qualify as a deckbuilder?

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by crgmyster:

Yea I regret my phrasing there. People have a right to complain for whatever reason. That said, if people think they are losing due to RNG and not a lack of skill, they are just wrong.

I think the examples you listed are great because they highlight why so many people think they are losing to RNG not skill. If you are in a situation where an aimless 50/50 would lose you the fight, the mistake already happened. You messed up in the way you built your deck, you messed up in the way you placed your crowns and charms, or you messed up in the way you've played out the fight. (cont)

I never once said that you can't win a lot with skill, but you absolutely can't be winning every run with skill because the RNG is too warping. Sometimes you WILL be offered 3 terrible Leader choices and then charms that aren't useful this run and then bad companion and card choices and then lose all your aimless gambles in the same run.

Retromation plays roguelikes for a living, he is literally a professional gamer, so I'm not surprised he has fantastic skill. Even then, you linked a video that I would say shows really great RNG, not bad RNG. He got a really good starting leader that did nice damage by itself while buffing other units, and then found companions that synergized well with the leader. He found what I would call a far above average set of charms allowing him to barrage snow+frost every other turn with his Snoof during the final boss. He didn't find a single charm that wasn't beneficial for his deck, and he picked up a lot of charms.

My point was that the barrier to win at all is gated too heavily by a combination of RNG and required skill. Videogames can't be made and balanced solely around the top 10% of players if they want reasonable sales and player reactions, which is exactly why the majority of reviews (including tons of positive reviews) are upset with the difficulty and hope the game adds an easy mode or rebalances the default setting. The margin for error is razor thin and at the end of the day this is an entertainment product and currently it is leaving many people unsatisfied.

The RNG heavily increases losses players suffer, and yes skill increases losses massively due to the very unforgiving nature of the game. Realistically one of these has to give unless the game wants to reject the vast majority of deckbuilder gamers. It can be an RNG heavy game with less skill requirement, or it can be a skill intensive game that is unforgiving but at least has less RNG upping the difficulty dramatically inconsistently.

As for my examples, that response just doesn't seem reasonable. I should be more careful with my charms? Ok, which of my cards should I put the Weakness charm on if I'm not running a buff that costs health to play? What do I put the Balance charm on if all of my companions have stats better than 3/3/3? Which one gets the Chuckle charm, which has no effect other than letting me put more charms on a card? You can only have so many bad RNG outcomes in a row before skill doesn't make up for them, not every risked 50/50 is risked solely because the player sucks. You'll probably see this in future Retromation videos, there will be times when even at his skill level he ends up just getting shafted by RNG hard.

[Fingusa of the East]

Contrary to what most vocal players would tell you, your average player prefers a chill relaxing experience rather than ball busting difficulty. Simple difficulty levels do not take from experience as you can still play on high difficulty while others can play on lower difficulty.

That way everyone is happy.

[Korbo]

Originally posted by Totopo:

Some people have different experiences than you do and prefer different things than you, and it seems you are much more forgiving of a game nuking your runs unfairly than most people are. Realize that when almost half of all people leave negative reviews due to difficulty, and even many positive reviews mention they think the game is overly hard, that there is a reason for it.
......

Really? People think this game is hard? Maybe it needs is a casual/easy mode for people who don't normally play cards games?
Personally coming from someone who enjoys playing card games and roguelikes, I found the vanilla version (without any challenge bells added) to be almost too easy. I lost my first run when I was still learning the game, then proceeded to win the second one, played again as snowdwellers (and won again) to unlock the shadowmancers, lost my first shadowmancer run to a misunderstanding of how a card worked (the summon that eats your allies, I assumed it wouldn't eat my leader but it did), and proceeded to win the second run with overburn because overburn is op as hell. So removing misplays because of unintuitive design and my first run learning the ropes, I pretty much won first try with the first two factions...

Then come the clunkmasters, the balance between junk and recyle is hard to grasp at first, and my overburn boss from the last win was way too OP so it took me three failed runs to finally win with them on my 4th run. The clunkmasters feel a bit difficult to understand quickly, but being able to win a full run on my first or second try with the other 2 factions before even knowing the game very well, felt if anything like the game was on the easier side compared to most other card games.

[fubarbarella♡]

Really? Korbo, you lost a few runs? I won every run so far blindfolded while eating an appel through a tennisracket.