Is the game too luck based?

[eepy83]

I swear this game is so RNG based and I feel like I have no control over my runs

[Zouls]

Originally posted by Impericus:

Originally posted by Kiro:

It is not the problem to win on white stacks. Everybody with a bit experience could easy do this.

It is about winrates of 95% or more. (some pages before was talking about easy 99%)
To get this winrate there is much luck involved.
There are unlucky seeds (maybe just for the built you choose) who cant be won by 100%.

THIS^ - Stating every run on white stake is 99% win rate is just not true. That might be your experience but surely not the common ground. It is a poker based card game - so stating zero luck is involved... well, think about it.

I had runs where I easily wipe through everything and with all the knowledge on how jokers, tarots etc work and how to combine them I had runs where zero jokers helped with multipliers, I stacked money and there was just nothing helpful to by that at a rather early point my played flushes did not amount to the needed sum even though I played Flushes each hand.

There were zero options to increase multipliers, all received tarot cards didn't help nor said jokers. So yes, that can happen.

I even have the feeling that unlocking lots of extra jokers ever so slightly turns the odds against you as not all of them are really helpful and just swamp the chances of getting the good ones.

except all you said here was "i wanted to build a specific deck, i ignored that nothing would favour it, and then said it was a bad run i couldnt win"

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Kiro:

Originally posted by Zouls:

I dont want to come off as a ♥♥♥♥ but im completely lost on how people can play that long and "only" get white stakes

Im 18 hours in and have done all unlocked decks on stake 2 and some on stake 3 i believe,

There are 16 Decks in the game. You done all on white and red stake and a few on green stake.

That about 40 wins in just 18 hours as complete new player, plus surely included some time in endless mode, in the menu and collection and maybe, (just maybe) a few looses, if not on white, then on red or green decks?

All in 18 hours?

Sounds a bit high. Even you play on speed 4. ;)

You misread, Zouls said "have done all unlocked decks on stake 2 and some on stake 3". You unlock only 12 decks (out of 15, there isn't 16 unless you count challenge mode's special deck background) by playing up to and including Green Stake (the 3rd one) so that's actually about 25 wins. 23 if the latest run was the first Green Stake win and the new unlocked deck wasn't counted. That's not entirely unreasonable if you play pretty quickly (i.e. you're not one of those people typing stuff into a calculator all the time, or holding R for half an hour) and win a lot. And not everyone goes into endless mode - I know I rarely do.

[Zouls]

Originally posted by Kiro:

Originally posted by Astroooooooo:

Don't listen to the trolls saying you have to "git gud" to win. It takes random luck to have the right jokers in the first few shops at higher stakes or you have to start a new run.

But my opinion (at this moment, maybe it changed with a few more expirience ) that that also count on withe stake.

As example: 78QWK3F1

With checkered deck. I picked Telescope on Ante 2 (or first shop 3??)
I guess its a nobrainer by playing the checkered flush deck.

Ante 3 = Big Boss with 11.200, and nothing to dodge.

Originally posted by S♥ShiMe:

even drspectred has to rerun and get lucky with jokers at gold. indeed the trolls "git gud" don't help a nice game become nicer.

On gold it is absolutely clear that you need luck and rerolls.

Sry but anybody who claims you can only achieve a 50% win rate is just dreaming. :)

Sorry i ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up, i thought it was a red deck not a checkered one, but i did it too, while spicy to start with i instantly took the "coins for straight" which i would have done even in a flush run, and then started stacking that as early as possible, which transitioned me into playing it as a straight run.

Had i been checkered i would probably have transitioned it into a straight flush deck as it lent itself so well to it, especially with shortcut card at like ante 2? or 3.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3204490468

[Bobby]

Originally posted by Fingusa of the East:

Originally posted by snakeskip:

Where do you get that number (90%) from?

I think a skilled player should each Ante 8 about 99 times out of 100 on White Stake. With any deck. There's hardly any luck involved at that level. When it comes to beating the game, that is.

High Stakes are different. I think Blue Stake could be quite consistently beatable (>80%). Purple Stake feels a lot more difficult, but I think a perfect player would reach clearly over 50% success rate on that level too.

I needed about 5 runs to beat Purple. Then I beat Orange on first effort, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't keep up 100% success rate at that level.

So I know you are gonna be whiteknighting for this game cause that's what gamers love doing these days, but lets just have a looksie.

Game is about cards, you get random cards every hand, discards are random and you only get about 4. Chance to increase this number is depending on a random chance for a voucher at a shop. Chance to increase your hand size is depending on a voucher as well, which is random.

The chance to affect your deck is almost entirely depending on tarot cards, which are randomly in shops either through the two possible cards at the top of the shop, which can also be completely random jokers. Only a small amount of tarot cards actually affect your deck, like good half are kinda pointless (gotta love getting turn to hearts cards on a spade deck, mhmm, my favorite).

All of that is also entirely depending on your jokers which are random, the more you unlock the more useless jokers exist and there is currently no way outside of modding the game to look for specific jokers and pull them. At this point there are maybe 10-12 jokers that have a possibility of winning a run and I have like what, a 100 or more jokers unlocked? The chance of having a winning run is so small I have higher chance of winning X-Com: Terror From the Deep while using harpoon guns, while all aliens are Lobstermen.

And just to make things even more RNG based, the boss blinds are also random and can completely destroy your run. Have you been having an amazing Spade Flush run? Boom Spade cards are disabled on Ante 6. Or you cannot use the same type of hand more than once. Or just Wall on Ante 4. Or instant kill on Ante 2.

Blind skips are also RNG, I have had runs where the game just loved giving me a million "double next blind tag" but like 6 times in a row. Literally happened to me on my last stream.

So yeah, suffice to say that this game is actually even more RNG reliant than actual real life Poker. You are more likely to win at Poker cause Poker actually takes a bit of strategy, bluffing and perceptive powers.

Edit: Also cherry ontop. Wheel of Fortune, literally the only way to improve terrible Jokers, is 1 in 4. Though from data from several streamers, my friends and my personal experience, it is much more like 5% than 25%.

idk brother, sounds like a skill issue to me

[iloos]

Yo i understand both sides, but heres my take.

ITS A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ROUGELITE

Yes there is luck. Each time you DIE your luck gets a bit better through external things like unlocks.

Other games like ROR2, binding of isaac, will also contain many runs where luck is not on your side. Similarly there will be god runs thanks to good RNG.

Where people are stuck debating is simply and a bit harshly said a skill issue. You get much better odds than poker as you can manipulatie all odds.

You can do things like stratagise about synergies (mostly joker but also other cards and statuses) , building as much money while barely staying alive early, quick calculations, or viewing the deck for getting an idea of the upcomming odds, and so much more.. I think the fun of the game is to figure out how to gitgud, and generally building intuition of the rng, to keep up with the increasing stakes..

I find it a fascinating game and quite exciting. Litterally just finished my first play through and 14h binge 😬😌

But I totally understand it feels luck based. Compared to other rougelike/lite games, rather than some walking and shooting mechanic, its a mad version of poker, gamified yet undoubtedly poker. Some people in poker are called 'advantaged players', and thus are banned from casinos. This game feels like it gives you the power of such a player, it's thrilling and i cant wait to play more when i get the time!


Or maybe i just like gambling.

[Sedrido]

i like a game that takes some luck in a landscape of sweat till you die games

[ambershee]

Originally posted by iloos:

Yo i understand both sides, but heres my take.

ITS A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ROUGELITE

Yes there is luck. Each time you DIE your luck gets a bit better through external things like unlocks.

Actually, your luck gets *worse* as you unlock more things, because the pool of cards you encounter (particularly jokers, but also vouchers) gets much, much broader as you unlock things.

[TimTim3000]

Who'd have thought that luck would be a factor in a card game

[Kiro]

Did beat the seed either now.

Not on first try. On Boss 7 i played a straith flush (lv1) indead of a normal flush (lv22) with supernova Oo - but on 2nd Try:

https://postimg.cc/mP3NpyTx

But at the moment i have an other problem with the game.
It starts to get boring. Especially the higher stacks when I look at the table.

More and more luck plays a role, less discards, eternal joker, more cost for booster packs > less booster packs...

and it starts repeating itself and always, a bit always the same.

But I didn't think it would hook me so much. Really a nice game that I will definitely play again and again.

But it's slowly time for something different.

[DrunkBunny94]

Been trying to improve and watching Balatro university and his most recent video was his performance in a balatro tournament.

Players were give the SAME seed and had 1 hour to get as high a score as possible. Restarting was allowed so players could do a little digging if they wanted to.
These are the results:
https://old.reddit.com/r/balatro/comments/1bqaj9o/balatro_university_put_on_an_absolute_show_at_the/

If the game was so massively luck based and skill was such a small factor then we wouldnt expect the difference between the players to be that big as they had the same luck by using the same seed.

However what we see is in round 1 first place scored 10,000,000,000,000,000,000x more score than last place and 10,000x more score than 2nd place, and this was done on the first attempt with no restarting/digging and the score was submitted with 25min left on the timer as balatro uni said that e19 would be good enough to get through round 1 lol

you can go and watch the side by sides if you like:

https://youtu.be/FAJHcgS9jHU?si=pwvrG__eT2DJ-Pa2 (starts 11min)

https://www.youtube.com/live/CrSGfWFWcII?si=kv54cP7pesdZXwEx (starts 36min)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2103996318 (starts 2hours 5min)

On lower stakes he says its always possible to win because theres so much you can do you can brute force high scores to always win the game.

[Fingusa of the East]

If they are all using the same seed but get such incredibly different scores, wouldn't that actually mean that RNG is much more important than skill?

Cause if skillful play mattered then surely they would be much more closer to each other, no?

If your logic was sound then there would be quite a long of difference between the best and second best Starcraft player instead of them being not even 1% WR from each other.

[A bear]

Originally posted by Fingusa of the East:

If they are all using the same seed but get such incredibly different scores, wouldn't that actually mean that RNG is much more important than skill?

Cause if skillful play mattered then surely they would be much more closer to each other, no?

If your logic was sound then there would be quite a long of difference between the best and second best Starcraft player instead of them being not even 1% WR from each other.

Them using the same seed means they had the same RNG, the differences in score are due to skillful decision making.

[DrunkBunny94]

Originally posted by Fingusa of the East:

If they are all using the same seed but get such incredibly different scores, wouldn't that actually mean that RNG is much more important than skill?

Cause if skillful play mattered then surely they would be much more closer to each other, no?

If your logic was sound then there would be quite a long of difference between the best and second best Starcraft player instead of them being not even 1% WR from each other.

As far as i know these were just balatro content creators, ranging from extremely good, to people that play a lot to some more casual creators, hence why a few people constantly threw up e numbers and some people managed to lose on white stakes...

Same seed means they get the same item pool in the shop each ante, they get the same choices from booster packs - the difference comes from the players choices. People that got higher scored were able to build better economies and then use that to get better jokes and manipulate their decks to build a huge score while others struggled to survive.

Comparison to SC is weird as thats a real-time PvP game where theres not only decision making but also execution, but yeah the top 100 players are probably going to be a league ahead of the top 1,000 players who are going to be a league ahead of the top 10,000 players etc to the point where they win the vast majority of the time.
If they weren't then they wouldn't be in that division...

[ambershee]

Unfortunately that experiment is more likely not proving that it's skill due to the enormous range of outcomes. You're seeing people making right and wrong decisions early on, but whether they're necessarily the correct decision is based on what they encounter later in the run that they cannot account for - unless they've already seen part of that run of course. That the range of outcomes is so wide indicates that luck is probably very much a factor.

[snakeskip]

Originally posted by ambershee:

That the range of outcomes is so wide indicates that luck is probably very much a factor.

The best player won every round. The second best got 4th, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd. The third best got 2nd, 3rd, 3rd. The fourth best got 5th, 4th, 4th.

These are very consistent results. If luck was a factor we would most likely have seen a lot of variance between rounds. This is not the case. The outcomes in this competition reflect nothing but the difference of skill.

In a closer competition luck could be a factor. Like in all close competitions where players can't control everything.