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"

[AlexStinson9]

it is extremely easy to win on base stake with all the decks. You don´t need a rare quantity of luck to do it. If you have won 5 times, you should be playing in white stake. Forget about the idea of you playing poker, this is a deck building roguelite game.
Do your best with that, you can do billions of billions of billions points playing just a high card. You need luck in order to achieve that, but you can defeat ante 8 boss blind with almost any joker combination if you balance chips, +mult and xmult, even if you don't have xmult, it's easy to win.

Last stakes are so much diferent, you cannot win without a good team and/or a lot of enhanced/modified cards.

[Your Majesty Padded Gamer]

This is the type of game that you just honestly have to get used to the lose streaks. But honestly if you have this much trouble, definitely read a guide. After awhile though it quickly becomes easier to beat and sure its a hell of a spike from the demo, but that's no reason to toss it aside.

[Your Majesty Padded Gamer]

Originally posted by 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.

That's where your just wrong imho. Money is an amazing incentive, especially on difficulties past white steak where the small blind gives you no reward, even if you only get 5 bucks that's better then nothing. And not to mention that skipping is the best way to generate hundreds of dollars in this game.

If you don't skip for 50 bucks, or hell even 10 assuming your of course ahead of the curve or in early ante, frankly you are cucking yourself.

Money is power in this game, the more money the more packs and the more re-rolls you can buy. And even more importantly, the vouchers that are honestly OP like telescope that is just completely busted.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Your Majesty Padded Gamer:

That's where your just wrong imho. Money is an amazing incentive, especially on difficulties past white steak where the small blind gives you no reward, even if you only get 5 bucks that's better then nothing.

You do not get no reward, just not the base Small Blind reward of $3. You still get paid per hand left, still get money from econ jokers, still get paid from gold seals and cards.
Playing the first blind in the game, in almost all cases gives you $3 past red stake, versus $6 on white stake. The difference here is that you'll be at $7 in the first store instead of $10, and thus can only afford basic jokers instead of everything except enhanced rares, or get $1 less interest if you decide to not buy anything. You still get 2 shop items and 2 pack possibilities more than if you skipped the round. Buying a mult joker means you probably get to oneshot the next two rounds giving you $2 return and possibly already leaving you set to scrape through ante 2.
Getting just $5 from the per skip tag gives you $2 more at the cost of a store. Not a guaranteed improvement, especially since that'll still leave you at $1 interest for round 2. If you started with $1 more or it was $6 per skipped round it'd be more worth it to take that tag, right now it isn't.
The $15 tag and free shop tags are usually worth taking, though the free shop one is 100% a gamble on if you don't get absolute thrash jokers. The free packs are almost always worth it though, except maybe if you get two crummy planet packs.

[Winter Wolf]

Unsubbing from this because people are responding to old posts within it without reading the entire thread. However, I'd like the advice and discussions to stay available for people who are interested,

[imaloony]

Originally posted by BeautifulFlowerField:

come on. how often do you get through 3-4 rounds without finding a SINGLE joker that affects score? it can happen but that is definitely not the norm. arcana packs could probably carry you to round 2 of ante 2 at least, maybe better .

I guess I should clarify that I'm mainly talking about high stakes runs. Low stakes, you've got a very good chance of being able to make a viable deck on most runs unless you get really bad RNG.

High stakes feels like you're just playing the lottery hoping for a god run to be offered to you rather than actually strategically buying and selling jokers and molding your deck.

[Zelakon]

Originally posted by Xersin:

See, I disagree that art vs artist applies to games. Especially now, in the age of continuous updates, and post launch changes, it is more important than ever to flag problematic devs and games. SE just hit the news for changing a game several years old. MH Rise just added a super sketchy DRM. If there is ANYTHING that destroys your faith in a game, you should review it accordingly, to give people an accurate assessment that something isn't right with the team behind the game.

Yes I completely understand that; I just wish there was a clearer distinction between negatively reviewing a game and saying it's bad, and recommending that people refrain from playing it for other reasons.

I suppose it's fine on Steam as the scoring is either 'recommended' or 'not recommended', but whenever I see some journalist review a game 0/10 just because they don't want people to support the dev, that really irritates me.

[Scrub]

Originally posted by Winter Wolf:

Unsubbing from this because people are responding to old posts within it without reading the entire thread. However, I'd like the advice and discussions to stay available for people who are interested,

Thank you for informing us that you are leaving?

[Xersin]

Originally posted by Scholar Asleep:

Originally posted by Xersin:

See, I disagree that art vs artist applies to games. Especially now, in the age of continuous updates, and post launch changes, it is more important than ever to flag problematic devs and games. SE just hit the news for changing a game several years old. MH Rise just added a super sketchy DRM. If there is ANYTHING that destroys your faith in a game, you should review it accordingly, to give people an accurate assessment that something isn't right with the team behind the game.

Yes I completely understand that; I just wish there was a clearer distinction between negatively reviewing a game and saying it's bad, and recommending that people refrain from playing it for other reasons.

I suppose it's fine on Steam as the scoring is either 'recommended' or 'not recommended', but whenever I see some journalist review a game 0/10 just because they don't want people to support the dev, that really irritates me.

Oh, I'm not talking about journalists. They're so useless at reviewing, and even playing games, that doing the opposite of what they say is almost always the better choice. It's been proven several times over that they're basically mouthpieces for whoever pays them more, and anyone with actual integrity gets fired. Then there are the ones that spite review, because they can't figure out a game that toddlers can figure out. In their own words, you "Don't have to be good at games to review them." Which is like having a sports commentator that doesn't understand sports.

But for actual player reviews, the good and bad are super necessary. Some of the best games I've ever played were hated by people who were offended by one thing or another, including people who were only tangentially related, and figuring out which of those opinions were signs that I would enjoy the game has shown me games I wouldn't have looked at otherwise.

[Zelakon]

Originally posted by Xersin:

But for actual player reviews, the good and bad are super necessary. Some of the best games I've ever played were hated by people who were offended by one thing or another, including people who were only tangentially related, and figuring out which of those opinions were signs that I would enjoy the game has shown me games I wouldn't have looked at otherwise.

Haha, agreed on all counts!

[☢ledom]

honestly i was having a lot more fun playing the demo than the full release. Ive been stuck on the black ante for a week or so and its driving me mad. the game is like 95% RNG and it really sucks when runs never had a chance from the start to get off the ground. ♥♥♥♥ i just had a game where i couldnt draw a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ diamond in 6 redraws. its just not fun when its just all chance.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Oledom:

honestly i was having a lot more fun playing the demo than the full release. Ive been stuck on the black ante for a week or so and its driving me mad. the game is like 95% RNG and it really sucks when runs never had a chance from the start to get off the ground. ♥♥♥♥ i just had a game where i couldnt draw a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ diamond in 6 redraws. its just not fun when its just all chance.

You had a lot more fun when you were forced to only play white stake than now that you willingly choose to not play white stake? I think I see where the issue lies here...

[Storm ⚡]

10/10 thread, Winter Wolf's character arc was crazy this season

[MPO]

Skill issue

[butterdog]

I feel like the game gets much harder the longer you play and unlock more jokers that aren't useful.