I wish reroll was just a bit cheaper...

[solamon77]

Winning this game is hard. Like real hard. Very RNG dependent. In the 15 hours I've played, I've only done it a handful of time and I don't want to take the hardness away, but I have to admit, I think the game would be more fun if it wasn't so expensive to reroll. It would go a long way to help a person build a setup.

I often find myself in a situation where I have a great setup that can carry me through Ante 6, but if I could find one more specific Joker I could push all the way with it. But money is so tight that dropping it on a reroll only to get nothing useful often feels like a foolish waste.

Maybe if rerolling was $3 or $4, it wouldn't feel so punitive to use it. It would help level out some of the RNG in this game without taking away much of the difficulty. Or maybe if it started out lower and then raised up over the ante so something.

[Coffee]

Make use of interest!

[solamon77]

Originally posted by Ꝙ Ghosthunter Ꝙ:

Make use of interest!

I do. Well, usually. Right now I'm playing with the green deck.

Either way, the reason I bring this up is that I'm kinda losing interest in this game when after 20 hours, 49 out of 50 games feel like an RNG beat. I like RNG and love rogue-likes but this feels really excessive here.

And it gets worse as you unlock more because it's even harder to find the stuff you need. The further on you go, the more rerolls you'll need. I did significantly better in the beginning than I do now and I think it's because my potential cards are now way more stuffed with things I don't usually need on any given run.

If in the beginning 1 or 2 rerolls would give me a winning joker, it's now 3 or 4. That's a problem. Isaac had a similar problem, but Edmund eventually added things (or more synergies) to help manage the large number of items the game had. Maybe add a spectral cards or something that work like Isaac's d6. Or a spectral card that lets you pull a joker of choice. I don't know.

So few of the Jokers in this game actually synergism with each other that I often feel like I'm stuck hoping for a particular event that never comes.

[Amplify]

I believe rather than re-rolls being cheaper, there just needs to be a bit of consistency to ante 1. As long as you can guarantee a few things really early on, you wouldn't even need to re-roll so aggressively while praying that maybe a miracle will happen this time.

Check this thread out and see what you think of my ideas here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2379780/discussions/0/4346607305583823636/

[solamon77]

Originally posted by Amplify:

I believe rather than re-rolls being cheaper, there just needs to be a bit of consistency to ante 1. As long as you can guarantee a few things really early on, you wouldn't even need to re-roll so aggressively while praying that maybe a miracle will happen this time.

Check this thread out and see what you think of my ideas here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2379780/discussions/0/4346607305583823636/

Yeah, this is a great idea. The 1 time consumable is kinda like what I meant when I said Isaac had things to help manage the RNG, like things that rerolled you treasure room for instance.

And as making ante 1 more consistent, this is also a great idea. If I can already just keep restarting the game in order to get the tags I want, there's no reason not to save me time and just let me pick them. It's not fun restarting over and over.

The game is really good. One of the best I've played in a while, but it still feels a bit rough around the edges. Which is fine because it's new. I just hope the devs are listening.

[Dippy AH]

play the first couple of antes, and if you're not feeling it, reset!
Games that are hard are fun as they push you to get better at them.
Balatro, like poker isn't about RNG, its about calculated risk. If you have that mentality you'll enjoy playing more I think

[S♥ShiMe]

Originally posted by Dippy AH:

play the first couple of antes, and if you're not feeling it, reset!
Games that are hard are fun as they push you to get better at them.
Balatro, like poker isn't about RNG, its about calculated risk. If you have that mentality you'll enjoy playing more I think

yeah, youtubers can play higher stakes consistently, i do think we can do it too.
Although it is true a lot of posts here suggests stuff to make the game more enjoyable, albeit easier. Its a trade off tbh, feeling ecstatic when you finally get a reallly good run or slightly more enjoyable consistency.

[Schlobb]

There's a voucher that reduces the reroll cost by $2.

[Amplify]

Originally posted by Schlobb:

There's a voucher that reduces the reroll cost by $2.

That voucher costs $10 and has to show up first. I think you've missed the point of what OP is complaining about here.

[Ronald Brain]

Originally posted by Amplify:

Originally posted by Schlobb:

There's a voucher that reduces the reroll cost by $2.

That voucher costs $10 and has to show up first. I think you've missed the point of what OP is complaining about here.

Are we going to disregard vouchers and enable Easy Mode just because people feel like it?

[Gillium]

At base difficulty, the game isn't hard at all. There's RNG, yes, but winning isn't dependent on having good luck. A decent player can win most runs by making good decisions with the options available to him. Plenty of great tips have already been provided on this forum, just look it up.

[Amplify]

Originally posted by Ronald Brain:

Originally posted by Amplify:

That voucher costs $10 and has to show up first. I think you've missed the point of what OP is complaining about here.

Are we going to disregard vouchers and enable Easy Mode just because people feel like it?

Not the point. The OP was asking for a bit of consistency in the early game, his idea was to slightly lower re-roll costs so they're affordable early on to try and actually get some useful Jokers in ante 1 and 2. This has nothing to do with vouchers or easy mode, you spoon.

Originally posted by Gillium:

At base difficulty, the game isn't hard at all. There's RNG, yes, but winning isn't dependent on having good luck. A decent player can win most runs by making good decisions with the options available to him. Plenty of great tips have already been provided on this forum, just look it up.

And what of difficulties from blue stake onwards? Should it be normal to reset a dozen runs looking for something specific when the game could simply cut out the middleman by default and throw the player a bone in ante 1?

[solamon77]

Originally posted by Amplify:

Originally posted by Ronald Brain:

Are we going to disregard vouchers and enable Easy Mode just because people feel like it?

Not the point. The OP was asking for a bit of consistency in the early game, his idea was to slightly lower re-roll costs so they're affordable early on to try and actually get some useful Jokers in ante 1 and 2. This has nothing to do with vouchers or easy mode, you spoon.

Originally posted by Gillium:

At base difficulty, the game isn't hard at all. There's RNG, yes, but winning isn't dependent on having good luck. A decent player can win most runs by making good decisions with the options available to him. Plenty of great tips have already been provided on this forum, just look it up.

And what of difficulties from blue stake onwards? Should it be normal to reset a dozen runs looking for something specific when the game could simply cut out the middleman by default and throw the player a bone in ante 1?

Yeah, this exactly. Thanks.

My other reason why I wanted rerolls a bit cheaper is because the more I unlock the less consistent my runs seem to get. In the beginning, when I had few things unlocked, I could count on getting decent stuff and put together a good run. Now that I have so much unlocked, I'll go hours without seeing jokers that used to be fairly common. As it stands the greater number of unlocks, the more subject you are to the whims of RNG. That, at least to me, feels like a problem. The game shouldn't feel worse the more unlocked, it should feel better.

Most games seem to solve this by having permanent upgrades to offset the additional items, like how in Isaac you can upgrade the store to regularly carry more items. Or how you can unlock more single-use consumables that helps you cycle through the items (like the runes or the playing cards). Balatro uses vouchers for a similar effect, but those too suffer from the more unlocks, less consistency problem.

The simplest way I can thing to solve this is by making rerolls a little cheaper, especially in the early game (ante 1 & 2). Doing so would let the player better cycle through the jokers on their quest to build a run.

[Winter Wolf]

imho it would be nice if there were more ways to discount the reroll. But if you make it baseline cheaper it might be too easy to cheese the shop once you got your cash flow management under control.

Maybe it would be possible to have the first few antes give a natural shop discount that quickly declines to zero and then maybe even increases per ante level?

[solamon77]

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

imho it would be nice if there were more ways to discount the reroll. But if you make it baseline cheaper it might be too easy to cheese the shop once you got your cash flow management under control.

Maybe it would be possible to have the first few antes give a natural shop discount that quickly declines to zero and then maybe even increases per ante level?

Yeah, that's one of the ideas I put forth earlier. Even if cheap reroll was earlier in the first couple ante, that would be helpful too. The last thing I would want is to make it too easy to cheese the shop.

[Amplify]

I updated the thread I posted earlier with better, fleshed out ideas. Here's one which is simple and alone would fix half the problem, if you don't wanna go read it:
Getting to start the game with a small one-time consumable token / ticket with the following effects:
- When in a blind, use to gain +4 Mult for the next played hand.
- When in a shop, use to reduce the price of the next re-roll by $3.
- Sell anytime for $0 or $1.

If you get the classic situation of an early boss blind where the game really don't want you to have anything better than three pairs with no more than three of any suit, you can use the +4 Mult option as a get out of jail free card. You can alternately use it for a cheap first roll in the hopes of finding any useful joker if the shop only wants to offer you straight flush planets and jokers that do nothing for you, and if priced $1 you could sell it in the first blind to get $5 and an extra dollar of interest. I said "$0 to $1" not as in it fluctuating, I was just undecided which would be balanced.