Pre-play score calculation

[TenaciousT]

Are there any plans to display a calculation of how many points a given hand will provide before being played? Or does this function already exist somewhere? It would be a really nice QoL feature.

[tinsanchez000]

I'm pretty sure they are not going to implement it seeing people in the community complaining. And as a result, the game risks becoming a bit of a slog if you play it for a long time. There's much more interesting design spaces for it to make the game challenging than to make a draining operation every single minute. I still think it would be extremely enjoyable, just playing a couple of runs max per session, or do what most people will do and don't do maths and pray what you chose is good enough.

[[SEXY]I'dRatherBeBill]

Originally posted by malogoss:

Originally posted by Nico:

Personally, I prefer that you have to pay attention and calculate for yourself what will work best. Otherwise, it would feel like you're in autoplay mode.

Do you also like to not use a calculator for square roots?
Not me.

100% with OP on this one.

You can easily estimate the square root of any number faster than you can enter it into a calculator. If you don't have a sense of what your cards are doing in this game, why are you playing?

[TenaciousT]

Originally posted by Bilgot the Heartless:

I was looking for good card game since some time. Before Balatro I noticed "Aces and Adventures" after short research I didn't buy it becasue game shows you the best cards you should play during your round, so that was the reason I didn't buy it. Finally I found Balatro, the great card game and now people want to make similar thing here...

If you don't like to think, If you don't like math maybe you don't like card games at all...

The best hand to play each round is obvious, it's just poker hands. The skill in the game doesn't come from calculating the current value of a hand, but predicting the odds of certain cards appearing and buying the right cards in the shop to multiply those odds. I personally don't take much pride in the maths skills required to perform 10+2+6+7+10+10*4*10*16, it's just busywork.

[moyang]

This feature is definitely needed. The numbers aren't that big in demo, but you can see the biggest blind requires 1.2 * 10^21 points. I can see myself making a spreadsheet and changing numbers several times each turn, and that's just not fun.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by TenaciousT:

Originally posted by Bilgot the Heartless:

I was looking for good card game since some time. Before Balatro I noticed "Aces and Adventures" after short research I didn't buy it becasue game shows you the best cards you should play during your round, so that was the reason I didn't buy it. Finally I found Balatro, the great card game and now people want to make similar thing here...

If you don't like to think, If you don't like math maybe you don't like card games at all...

The best hand to play each round is obvious, it's just poker hands. The skill in the game doesn't come from calculating the current value of a hand, but predicting the odds of certain cards appearing and buying the right cards in the shop to multiply those odds. I personally don't take much pride in the maths skills required to perform 10+2+6+7+10+10*4*10*16, it's just busywork.

But if the best hand to play is obvious, there's no need for it to tell you what your hand score will be before you play it. Just play that apparently obvious hand. Showing what the end result will be provides literally zero benefit in your scenario.
The only time it would benefit anyone, is when you don't know what the optimal joker or card order would be, so you can just drag stuff around until it tells you you'd get the highest reward... which takes all the skill out of the game, as I already said.

You guys just keep defeating your own argument. Especially the absolute doofuses claiming the math is too simple to be a skill while also claiming people need a calculator to do it.
Just play the game, with your own knowledge, and if you make a suboptimal play because of your lack of understanding just accept that you messed up and deserved to lose.

[malogoss]

If you are always playing the top score hand, you are playing pretty poorly.

It's not about joker order for the highest scoring hand. It's about playing a hand that scores close to but less than 6k points when that's what you need.

And if you'd rather just calculate 12 hands to see which one is closest to 6k points, then do that, in what way does the existence of the tool change anything for you?

[Goblin]

Originally posted by malogoss:

If you are always playing the top score hand, you are playing pretty poorly.

It's not about joker order for the highest scoring hand. It's about playing a hand that scores close to but less than 6k points when that's what you need.

When you need to play low scoring hands, for example to farm money with reserved parking or to get tarot cards from vagabond, it still doesn't matter how much you will score. You just play those low scoring hands that get you your bonus, and you either go over the required score after a few, or you play your good cards on the last hand. Knowing exact numbers ahead of time still doesn't benefit you, unless you need the game to tell you your optimal layouts (be they to score high or low) for you.

[TowerWizard]

Originally posted by TenaciousT:

The best hand to play each round is obvious, it's just poker hands.

Not always. Maybe you have upgraded your three of a kind a few times, and have a three of a kind in 8 in your hand, but you also have a full house as an option, but it is not upgraded. Which is the better play?

And that is not even considering upgraded cards. Maybe you have a jack with +30 chips upgrade, and you have two other jacks. So, you could play three-of-a-kind jacks. Also, you have a straight, using Four Fingers (so it only needs four cards), but it does not use your jacks. Which is better?

There are many more such scenarios, involving upgraded cards and jokers...

[ima]

It's not even about what's the best hand to play in a given situation, it's about "will this hand score me 16000 or will it score me 15800?". And random variables aside, this is something that can be solved by entering a huge bunch of numbers in a calculator. Letting the game optionnally preview it for you doesn't remove any skill, it's just quality of life.

People who thinks the most important skill in the game is selecting the best hand to play are absolutely missing all the others ways skill expression comes into this game.

[Ronald Brain]

Originally posted by ima:

It's not even about what's the best hand to play in a given situation, it's about "will this hand score me 16000 or will it score me 15800?". And random variables aside, this is something that can be solved by entering a huge bunch of numbers in a calculator. Letting the game optionnally preview it for you doesn't remove any skill, it's just quality of life.

People who thinks the most important skill in the game is selecting the best hand to play are absolutely missing all the others ways skill expression comes into this game.

Misprint? Bull + 1-2 card with gold seal? Bull + Business card and a hand with 5 Face cards? Lucky Card? Are you telling me the game HAS to know in advance that it'll roll the dice in your favor or what?

Let's be real, if you're that behind with only 1 hand left, what's the point of knowing the score in advance? Save a few seconds to quit?

[malogoss]

@Ronald Brain

About RNG, go read post #5 of the thread.

[Iggy]

I wouldn't want it. Maybe an option. I get the idea why you'd want it, especially when you don't fully understand how cards may interact. I usually want as much usability as possible so it's probably 'correct' to have it show the score.

There are many times though you actually don't know for certain what the score will be due to random multipliers and conditions.

I do concur it takes a lot out of the thinking, which is the primary avenue to what is the core fundamental fun of the game, out of the game should it just tell you if you have enough or not.

[TenaciousT]

Originally posted by Iggy:

I wouldn't want it. Maybe an option. I get the idea why you'd want it, especially when you don't fully understand how cards may interact. I usually want as much usability as possible so it's probably 'correct' to have it show the score.

There are many times though you actually don't know for certain what the score will be due to random multipliers and conditions.

I do concur it takes a lot out of the thinking, which is the primary avenue to what is the core fundamental fun of the game, out of the game should it just tell you if you have enough or not.

I keep hearing similar statements that it "takes out of a lot of the thinking", but I don't understand. If someone needs to get 19K to finish a round and they know their selected hand will score around 18-20K, there is negligible skill involved in the subsequent calculation. The primary avenue to what is the core fundamental fun of the game is creating the circumstances for high-scoring combinations to appear.

[Linio]

Originally posted by TenaciousT:

I personally don't take much pride in the maths skills required to perform 10+2+6+7+10+10*4*10*16, it's just busywork.

This pretty much sums it up.
You could easily add a toggable stuff for the fancy hardcore gamers.

[symphony]

I don't like math OR cards but this game is fun and a "total damage" stat would definitely take a way some of the satisfaction of solving a problem. I don't think you have to do math to win, you just need to know how your cards work with eachother.

I think there could definitely be some sort of middle ground, like an indicator to show which jokers will proc with what cards are played, or some more accurate tally of theoretical chips + mult on the left.

Originally posted by Linio:

Originally posted by TenaciousT:

I personally don't take much pride in the maths skills required to perform 10+2+6+7+10+10*4*10*16, it's just busywork.

This pretty much sums it up.
You could easily add a toggable stuff for the fancy hardcore gamers.

Options like this that affect difficulty never work in video games because no one will ever OPT to make the game harder/more tedious for themselves (unless they affect achievements). If it's a QOL of thing people would only ever turn it off for "immersion" like turning off your hud in some games