Perishable jokers seem bad

[Effluvial Kraken]

So the big problem with this game is that it's luck-based, and what better way to fix that than to make it so that jokers are just randomly bad? It also seems like they're WAY too common. It feels like 50% of the jokers are perishable now. This is a step in the opposite direction. Imagine how many more gold stake runs have to be reset now because you rolled the right joker but it was perishable.

[srn347]

It's 30% (formerly 35.7% but that bug was recently patched), although it now can't apply to non-retroactive scaling jokers as that makes them ACTUALLY useless. That said, if you were resetting a bunch of runs because you refuse to use perishable jokers at all, that is not an issue with the game, it's an issue with your strategy. Not every joker taken has to be a permanent installation in your build.

[Effluvial Kraken]

Originally posted by srn347:

It's 30% (formerly 35.7% but that bug was recently patched), although it now can't apply to non-retroactive scaling jokers as that makes them ACTUALLY useless. That said, if you were resetting a bunch of runs because you refuse to use perishable jokers at all, that is not an issue with the game, it's an issue with your strategy. Not every joker taken has to be a permanent installation in your build.

Are you trying to defend them, or do you agree that they shouldn't have been added into the game? I hope you don't actually think that there's any deep strategy in this game.

[srn347]

Of course there's deep strategy, as is often the case for roguelikes. Are you somehow convinced there isn't?

[Ronald Brain]

Originally posted by Effluvial Kraken:

Are you trying to defend them, or do you agree that they shouldn't have been added into the game? I hope you don't actually think that there's any deep strategy in this game.

Many Jokers are meant to be early game / short term, so the Perishable sticker don't really affect them. If you have to hold onto them for that long, chances are your run won't make it to Ante 8 anyway.

The issue with Balatro RNG, as far as I'm concerned, is the imbalance of early / late ante's viable Joker distribution. Sometimes we're stuck with nothing but utility / econ, sometimes we encounter powerful Rare but can't make use of them because it's too early in the ante, etc... Skilled players may argue adapt & survive, but I'll maintain my opinion that *some* seed will always be unbeatable first encountered, because you simply can't plan your way around specific builds which get killed by a boss blind deep into Ante 6 / 7.

[Eulenspiegel_Narrenkaiser]

To me, and to my couple of friends who play that I speak with about the game, this patch made the game dramatically easier. Yes, perishable jokers are bad, but they are relatively easy to play around. That, compared to increasing pack cost, is just so much more manageable. The previous version was just a constant assault on your economy along with earlier blinds that scaled even faster in the early antes than they do now. That, along with buffs to a number of cards, it all makes the game a lot easier overall.

As to why perishable jokers aren't even really that bad, it's much like Ronald Brain said; many jokers you don't hold onto that long anyway. Some jokers you hold onto for a few rounds for early economy, then ditch when your money is in a steady state for chips that help score. Some are very simple common jokers that add chips or low plus mult that help finish blinds in one hand for extra cash, but you'd never keep around in the late game. Some cards like ice cream and popcorn just kill themselves anyway; popcorn destroys itself in the time the joker would become perishable regardless. And then even if a perishable joker is debuffed, it doesn't lose sell value, so you're still recouping cost like you would sell a joker normally.

[malogoss]

I won't say that perishable jokers are good, of course not.

Perishable and rental are both missing their target and that's what matters. They are supposed to make the game tougher. After all, those are orange and gold stakes' penalties, so they should make the game tougher, right? They barely do that! Say what you want about the old orange and gold, at least they were making the game tougher.

New stakes make it a bit tougher... only maybe? What I mean is, compare win rate at purple stake and win rate at gold stake, they will be very close if not identical now.

The thing they do change the most is the annoyance factor. It's insane that before, packs were immune to eternal jokers but now that there's 3 effects to make jokers worse, packs are not immune.

Sorry what?

Anyway, I don't plan on playing gold anymore. It'll be white or purple stake from now on. I'll take the challenge of purple, it's the same as gold now, just less annoying. Glad I played a lot before the patch.

youtu.be/d6Pcp944sRI?si=zmKg8KrwOsdn5DtQ

[srn347]

Yeah packs being affected is incredibly obnoxious, I don't understand what would ever possess localthunk to do that. I probably won't bother with gold anymore either once I have c++ (41 stickers to go). Jokers off of joker tags being affected is also completely antithetical to their purpose: the goal was to make skipping more viable, and now both those tags and skipping in general are less viable than ever before.

[malogoss]

Originally posted by srn347:

Yeah packs being affected is incredibly obnoxious (...)

The game went from "make the best of what's inside that pack", so basically learn to work with sub optimal jokers, to "pray those 2 jokers aren't eternal + rental". Not an exaggeration, it happened to me before. Then it's not about picking the best of 2 bad options, it's about not picking anything to not shoot yourself in the foot.

I wish you some luck and patience for those stickers. If anything, the patch made gold stupid and you are a good player, you should be done in no time. I remember being down to 11 stickers left and unlocking 4 in a single run, in what was then the experimental beta. That's how easy it got.

See you.

[Jdwarfer]

The new preishable AND rental mechanic seems to suck hard...
Reading the update log makes me think that the game is harder, which is really bad.
The game isn't an early access, they shouldn't add or modify stuff that could ♥♥♥♥ it up lol

[malogoss]

Originally posted by Jdwarfer:

The new preishable AND rental mechanic seems to suck hard...
Reading the update log makes me think that the game is harder, which is really bad.
The game isn't an early access, they shouldn't add or modify stuff that could ♥♥♥♥ it up lol

It's probably 5 or 10 times easier than it used to be at gold stake. Annoying yes, but easier.