Request: please add playing hand type change choice

[mousenano]

I'm choosing 3 x club 8s and 2 x club 10s for my hand and the game says it's `Flush House lvl 1' which is nice with 140x14 stats, but I would rather pick just my Flush lvl 10 with 170x22. I guess the game should allow player to pick any hand type that matches.

[malogoss]

So when you'd play a flush house, a menu would pop up.

Do you want your hand to count as a:
flush house
flush
full house
3 of a kind
2 pairs
pair
high card

No thanks, I'll pass. It would also make high card and pairs even better than they already are. That would be a big problem.

[mousenano]

It may be a drop-down list instead of current text field with the most relevant type preselected.

[somethingoffensive]

I lost to the boss blind that only lets you play one type of hand because of this. This is a much needed feature.

[somethingoffensive]

Originally posted by malogoss:

So when you'd play a flush house, a menu would pop up.

Do you want your hand to count as a:
flush house
flush
full house
3 of a kind
2 pairs
pair
high card

No thanks, I'll pass. It would also make high card and pairs even better than they already are. That would be a big problem.

Well then at least make it context sensitive for certain boss blinds. For example a Royal Flush should also count as a straight, so you don't auto-fail the blind.

[Exploding Carrot]

Originally posted by malogoss:

So when you'd play a flush house, a menu would pop up.

Do you want your hand to count as a:
flush house
flush
full house
3 of a kind
2 pairs
pair
high card

No thanks, I'll pass. It would also make high card and pairs even better than they already are. That would be a big problem.

I get what you're saying with this. However, as this game doesn't strictly adhere to the rules of Poker in as much as things like Flush Houses even exist, and further to that in certain situations a simple Flush could outscore a Flush House, I think it is actually quite an important thing to add especially where there are bosses that restrict what hands can be played.

Seeing as how strategy is very important, I think this would actually be a QOL feature that is needed.

[Lod101]

Originally posted by Exploding Carrot:

Originally posted by malogoss:

So when you'd play a flush house, a menu would pop up.

Do you want your hand to count as a:
flush house
flush
full house
3 of a kind
2 pairs
pair
high card

No thanks, I'll pass. It would also make high card and pairs even better than they already are. That would be a big problem.

[...]Seeing as how strategy is very important [...]

building your deck accordingly to what hand/hands you wanna play is also part of the strategy of the game.

[snakeskip]

That would slow down the game play. And it would of course remove the element of avoiding rarer hands. And change the balance of the hands. And quite likely also change how some Jokers or Boss Blinds work.

I'd rather accept that I need to dodge Full Houses to get my high level Two Pair points. It makes the game more challenging and quicker to play.

[malogoss]

Originally posted by Exploding Carrot:

Seeing as how strategy is very important, I think this would actually be a QOL feature that is needed.

Your definition of QoL is pretty loose if such a change would be just that to you, a QoL feature.

Many strategic decisions are the product of the automatic hand type selection and automatic scoring of the played cards.

Playing a full house and having the possibility to count it as a pair drags the game to a sub white stake level. Might be interesting to you. Definitely isn't to me. It'd break the game and I'll trust the dev to not make his own game less strategic.

[malogoss]

Originally posted by somethingoffensive:

Well then at least make it context sensitive for certain boss blinds. For example a Royal Flush should also count as a straight, so you don't auto-fail the blind.

First of all, a Royal Flush is a nice name, but it's a straight flush.

So your view is that a straight flush should also count as a straight.
By that logic, it should also count as a flush.
Why should it be that way? Because for you, The Mouth is too difficult. Fine.

With those new rules...
When facing The Eye, if my opening hand is a straight flush, then my 2nd hand couldn't be a straight flush, a flush or a straight. You see how, by suggesting something that would lessen your struggle against The Mouth, you just made The Eye an even more terrifying foe than it already is?

And I'm 100% confident that for the vast majority of players, The Eye ends more runs than The Mouth does, even before such change.

[malogoss]

Originally posted by mousenano:

It may be a drop-down list instead of current text field with the most relevant type preselected.

And then what, if you pick high card, you have to select which of the 5 cards you want to score?

Players tend to like clean UI. They also tend to not like layers upon layers of menus when they are not necessary.

[mousenano]

Originally posted by malogoss:

Originally posted by mousenano:

It may be a drop-down list instead of current text field with the most relevant type preselected.

And then what, if you pick high card, you have to select which of the 5 cards you want to score?

Players tend to like clean UI. They also tend to not like layers upon layers of menus when they are not necessary.

Simply applying current algorithm of picking high card from a hand would be enough.

I was just confused that an unknown to me and non-listed hand type ruined my strategy. I'm fine if this is intended situation, but at least some clarification would be nice to have, like an additional message in the tutorial that highest hand type including *magical* ones always take precedence.

Maybe choosing from all the matches is too much. But as an example switching between Flush House/Flush Royale and Flush by hitting some hotkey would not hurt anyone.

[Lucky Strikes]

Originally posted by malogoss:

Originally posted by mousenano:

It may be a drop-down list instead of current text field with the most relevant type preselected.

And then what, if you pick high card, you have to select which of the 5 cards you want to score?

Players tend to like clean UI. They also tend to not like layers upon layers of menus when they are not necessary.

This 100%. The beauty of Balatro is it's as simple to play as solitaire but complex enough to require you to have a solid strategy if you want long term success. Allowing you to arbitrarily choose your hand type CHANGES THE WHOLE GAME. The point of the game is to manipulate your deck and to discard certain cards so you have a higher chance of landing the hand type you want, within the rules set forth.

[lordatog]

There is an easy way to do this that wouldn't clutter the UI or slow down gameplay. Much like you can drag around cards and jokers to change the order in which they trigger, you could open up the hand list in Run Info and drag the hands up or down to determine their priority - hands higher on the list will be used if possible. If you don't want to use the feature, adding this would change exactly nothing about your play experience.