Anyone else thing the standard card packs are underwhelming?

[He Shoots, He]

Compared to spectral packs or buffoon packs or tarot card packs or planet card packs, the standard packs are always my last option in the shop.

Most of the cards in the packs are plain and un-upgraded in any way, and occasionally there's even duplicates in the packs. Whenever there's an upgraded card in the pack it feels like there's no reason to pick any other card unless another card just happens to conveniently work with your specific deck.

Has anyone else had the same experience with buying standard packs in the shop?

[☃Thelonelysnowman ☃]

Even without upgraded cards it's decent for increasing the chances of getting the right card if you're doing something like all flushes, all face cards, etc. Still usually worse than the other pack types, but if you have a run that's swimming in money it can give a nice upgrade

[malogoss]

I disagree.

I've hit many crazy cards, like glass cards that trigger twice, or holographic lucky cards, things like that. When I open a pack I expect at least one card to be buffed. It often is two. I even had to chose between 3 buffed cards a couple of times.

No buffed card does happen, but very rarely. Even then, odds are you'll be offered one that is pretty good. Maybe you need a spade, or an "8", or whatever fits in your build.

You are right that spectral packs are in a league of their own. That I agree with.

But then buffoon packs. I like to have 2-3 jokers early on. Buffoon packs are good at that. Because often, any joker is better that no joker. But once I'm at 3 jokers, that's it, I'm set, buffoon packs will likely give nothing good. I'd rather save money and buy jokers when they appear.

Celestial packs were really, really good in the previous demo. Now? Not so much. It's much tougher to get a hand to level 8+ now than it was before. Simply because of how many pack types there are now. Many shops you don't see a celestial pack. Then you finally buy one and whiff. No Telescope voucher to help with that in this demo.

Finally, yes, arcane packs are good. Especially if you have some money in the bank and a full joker roster. With the joker that gets +1 Mult per tarot card played, tarot cards can win a run, for sure.

1. Spectral
2, Arcane
3. Standard
4. Celestial
5. Buffoon

That's how I'd rank packs in this demo version, #1 being the most useful or powerful pack. I'm not saying Buffoon packs are useless. But the way I play, I buy 0, 1, rarely 2 in a whole run and that's it. Past that point, if I could guarantee they stop appearing at the shop, I would do it, to get more of the others.

2 packs per shop, with no possibility to see more than that, drawn from a pool of 5 pack types is awkward. And then some shops are possibly skipped to get tags, which makes things even worse.

[Goblin]

A Standard Pack is essentially a Death card (or whichever was the one that changes one card into the other) with some benefits and a bit more randomness.
A buffoon pack is essentially a shop reroll with a free pick, and no chance at getting a tarot or celestial card.

To get a strong deck, you want a combination of thinning out cards you don't want and padding it with more of the cards you do want. Early on Standard packs can be a way to determine what cards you want, if jokers don't already make you have a preference at least. Later on they're more of a gamble.
The odds you get a card of a specific rank is 1-(1-1/12)^(# of cards in pack), so for a 3 card pack it's about 23%. Though there is a (small?) chance it spawns as a stone card, which still knows what rank/suit it is but you wouldn't know until you de-stone it by giving it another modifier. Could be an interesting choice if stone cards still told you what they are, but I doubt that'll get added.
Chance you get a suit of your choice (for pure flush builds, which aren't a great choice IMO) is 1-(1-1/4)^(#) so about 57.8% for the 3 card pack.
It's only when you want both at the same time that the odds become too small to consider investing unless you have more money than you could ever need, at 1-(1-1/48)^(#) AKA ~6.1% for the 3-pack.

As a sidenote, Buffoon packs may be more useful in the full game depending on whether or not the pool of jokers you get in a run is limited or not. Chances you get a joker with functionality that meshes well with your current setup becomes smaller as you increase the number of possible pulls each time you get a shop/reroll. There might be more scraping by with the jokers you have until you get a lucky pull, or at least less runs with nearly all jokers having great synergy. Of course the dev could always mess with the odds, for instance picking one or two "joker themes" at the start of the run and either only giving you those, or (more likely) increasing the odds you encounter those. Of course it's hard to tell if that'd be required to improve how fun/doable the average run is, this is just me musing about a potential issue without knowing what the full set of jokers is like. Maybe could also be a nice influence on the difficulty setting, so it's not (just) about requiring higher scoring hands but (also) lower odds of you getting synergies because you pick more of those "joker themes" at the start.

[ima]

It's very good if you have the voucher that increases your odds of finding holo/foil cards, otherwise it's very luck-dependant. I could see them being at -1 cost.