Well it was a game

[Winter Wolf]

I am convinced I will get no more wins and am deleting Balatro for good. The game is fairly well set to stymie even the "luckiest" start. I say this after getting a 5th win in hundreds of games. It just feels like an empty never ending experience of not winning with an extremely rare exception of "oopsIdidn'tevenmathtowinthis"

[So Cal Old Man]

yeah after 40 hours i'm kinda burned out. I enjoyed the fact it was so addictive for a while and I'm still recovering from loss of sleep.

[lel]

Understandable.

In my case, I'm feeling a bit burned out / demotivated despite only having 27hrs in and like 5 wins.

The problem I have is that because I'm winning mostly on pairs, there are a lot of stuffs that are locked behind certain criteria and to get those criteria, its just a matter of luck and grinding.

For example, I believe there is planetary card for flush house and flush 5. To get that, you really have to grind and have some good RNG to not only win the blinds, but also get the correct spectre / tarot cards. When I was playing my pair run, the amount of times I cycle and I see the same cards over and over again is huh~... Because I cant unlock others, I see only the same Jokers again.

And ironically, in that 27hrs of playing, I have only gotten 2 Legendary Joker and ironically, its both Chicot....

Add on, the steam achievement for this game is also a grind RNG fest. Thin your deck down to 20 cards, get 80 cards or more, use 5 wildcard as flush.... Like these are all just base on how lucky you are to get it.

The other problem I have is well....I dont know what but its missing the "Victory" satisfaction. I dont know what it is but beating it doesnt make me go WOOOOO. It's just, ah okay, I won. I know some people will comment " why not try different builds if you are bored " or "do some higher stake challenges " but it still comes down to the same 2 problems, i.e grinding to get more cards and there isnt any victory satisfaction feeling for me.

I might come back to this game some day or something

[malogoss]

"The more I practice, the luckier I get"

[A bear]

Originally posted by malogoss:

"The more I practice, the luckier I get"

I keep getting luckier the more I practice too.

[lel]

Originally posted by godhead:

Originally posted by lel:

Understandable.

In my case, I'm feeling a bit burned out / demotivated despite only having 27hrs in and like 5 wins.

The problem I have is that because I'm winning mostly on pairs, there are a lot of stuffs that are locked behind certain criteria and to get those criteria, its just a matter of luck and grinding.

For example, I believe there is planetary card for flush house and flush 5. To get that, you really have to grind and have some good RNG to not only win the blinds, but also get the correct spectre / tarot cards. When I was playing my pair run, the amount of times I cycle and I see the same cards over and over again is huh~... Because I cant unlock others, I see only the same Jokers again.

And ironically, in that 27hrs of playing, I have only gotten 2 Legendary Joker and ironically, its both Chicot....

Add on, the steam achievement for this game is also a grind RNG fest. Thin your deck down to 20 cards, get 80 cards or more, use 5 wildcard as flush.... Like these are all just base on how lucky you are to get it.

The other problem I have is well....I dont know what but its missing the "Victory" satisfaction. I dont know what it is but beating it doesnt make me go WOOOOO. It's just, ah okay, I won. I know some people will comment " why not try different builds if you are bored " or "do some higher stake challenges " but it still comes down to the same 2 problems, i.e grinding to get more cards and there isnt any victory satisfaction feeling for me.

I might come back to this game some day or something

I'm used to batshıt random unlock requirements thanks to binding of Isaac and RoR2 but this game has some of the weirdest card unlock requirements I've seen. Just because something is possible if you try everyday for a couple days doesn't mean you need to attach something as crucial as a joker unlock to it. I hope as the game receives more attention these issues are noticed by the players and developers and hopefully looked at. I will still try to get all unlocks but I am pretty sure 99.99% of the playerbase will be burned out by then.

Exactly~ Also tbh, the dev can just give chips to win and buy some cards using the chips. Sure its an easy way to get the cards BUT StS, you get everything in just 4-5 rounds. I think its more fun than trying to unlock some locked cards and get burned out by then

[Winter Wolf]

I don't think this is a luck problem but a skill problem. I am missing something inherent in the game to progress. I think it is pretty obvious that luck plays a small part since even a very lucky start ends in a deadend ante7-8 most games. Very rarely does it become a win.

[lel]

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

I don't think this is a luck problem but a skill problem. I am missing something inherent in the game to progress. I think it is pretty obvious that luck plays a small part since even a very lucky start ends in a deadend ante7-8 most games. Very rarely does it become a win.

I dunno. For my pairs and duo pairs, I get consistency wins on it. The problem for me is afterwards, where getting higher numbers is hard because of how my cards are, i.e I havent modified enough cards to hit high numbers.

My highest score is about 1 million 200k. I cant hit higher than that because well... to get higher, you need to play with playing cards that are A K Q J that sync with each other that sync with the Jokers that are enchanted and not only that, remove a lot of cards so you will only get those cards.

I'm not the best but if you want my advice on pairs / duo pairs, I can tell you which cards to get which SHOULD be able to win you the game. You get this handful cards, you should win it

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

I don't think this is a luck problem but a skill problem. I am missing something inherent in the game to progress. I think it is pretty obvious that luck plays a small part since even a very lucky start ends in a deadend ante7-8 most games. Very rarely does it become a win.

Main skill is knowing what to focus on when you have specific jokers. You generally always want at least one xMult joker, and stuff like jokers that give it for "held in hand" cards require more focus on hand level while jokers that give it itself synergize better with scaling +mult jokers. Long term, knowing the odds of a synergy appearing for a given joker will probably turn out to make certain metas appear too.
Deck manipulation is also a skill, optimizing the odds you get the card draw you want. A vanilla deck for flushes is more likely to get RNG-screwed out of a flush than a deck with 12 aces is to fail to produce a five of a kind. You also want to have bigger hand size if you're building for 5 card hands, while a pair build cares way less.

Those are just some random notes, I'm mostly just agreeing there's plenty of small intricacies and sometimes we all make misplays by for instance mixing focus too much and probably don't even notice. Experience will help with that. And time will prove certain (popular) strats to just be less effective than others.
For instance people complain the start is too RNG on higher stakes, while also saying they tend to skip the first and often second blind there. That's losing out on 2-4 jokers and potential buffoon packs, so complaining you don't get a viable joker while actively lowering the number you see seems like an anti-strat to me. Same with flushes, but some people swear those are the only viable strat.

[Not a summoner]

My best advice if you're just going for Ante 8 is to find three crucial things: Economy joker, early hand joker (gonna be +mults in general) and times mult jokers are the most crucial if you wanna get through the last antes.

Tarot card generators are amazing, purple and red seals are fantastic.

[very special]

If you have 5% winrate on white stake difficulty ur definitely misunderstanding game mechanics and/or tunnel visioning on things that aren't helping you.
+chips +mult and xmult jokers are enough to get you through white stake difficulty with more than enough wiggle room. Use tarot cards to buff the cards that are good for you and remove/transform the cards that aren't good for you.
I have won 5/5 of my white stake games and wish I could be playing more rn but I've been busy.

[Joeynator3000]

Yeah I'll go back to it again once it gets more updates...and i'm on Switch so I haven't even got the recent updates that fix stuff like The Arm. But yeah, I RARELY win...I found myself being infuriated more than often, finding the perfect strategy only to be screwed over sometimes by not even a boss...all because the game decides to be like "nah you're not getting what you need at all, you're going to lose anyways".

People say this game is all about skill, just do flushes and you'll win!....Um, yeah I've been constantly doing flushes, and rarely win...it's rng...it's luck...lol

[tim.]

Yeah, the big thing for me is how reliant on RNG getting a good run is. You can't go in thinking "I want to try a high card run." and build around it, it's the opposite. You need to develop a run on available Jokers. That's just not very fun to me and after 30~ hours of gameplay i've gotten tired of fishing for fun builds and wading through dogass RNG.

I've won plenty and gotten to endless, but i've rarely had a fun time doing it, and anytime a god build starts to emerge it gets kneecapped by horrible shops.

Probably a fine game to just play one or two rounds a night but the RNG is too disrespectful to my time to put in any more than that.

[Joeynator3000]

I really hope more balances come to this game, I really love it, but holy crap it's infuriating. Even when you get the best combos of Jokers ever, one boss blind decides to screw you over anyways...or a normal blind screws you over because you keep drawing crappy hands, lol

[lel]

Agree with Goblin. You really really need at least 1X Mult. If you get 2, its even better. Even if the card is garbage ( like if you run a pair card but have a card that offers x4 for flush ) but its a polychrome card that gives a 1.5x multiplier, its a godsent ( its ♥♥♥♥ if you want to get high scoring though ).

The way I usually win is that I have 1 Joker that is a poker chip, 2 + Mults cards and 2 X Mults Card. That way, you have a poker chip that adds with your card, 2 + cards that pushes the red multiplier higher and 2X to double it.

Manage to finish another run in 30 mins with that deck

[Winter Wolf]

I don't understand how anyone can win without having the +c +m xm basic Joker setup. That seems elementary to just get past 8 with any of the decks.

My issue is deeper than that. I often (but not always by any means or even mostly) get the +c +m xm jokers but still stall at Boss 7 and 8. I don't think it is a luck issue because even with bad luck I've gotten all three types and even with a lucky start I have stalled at 7/8.

I also rarely skip hands unless I see a free shop or something equally powerful. Money is not usually a good enough incentive imho.