Very big blind is unfair

[NamelessJPEG]

Need to hit 1.200.000 points on violet difficulty without any options to reroll boss blind. Before it beat every blind without any problems with 1-2 played hands. So, singe option to beat it, is reroll or strong dead RNG combo that you can find in 1 of 50 runs.

[malogoss]

Lets be honest. The odds of beating VV are more than 1 in 50 on purple stake, even if it's often the final boss you'd rather not face.

Apparently you did not find it, but Director's Cut is an out, that you'll find a lot more often than 2% of the times.
Luchador is an out.
Mr. Bones is an out.
Chicot is an out, though extremely rare, of course.
Depending on what your joker lineup is, many Xmult jokers can be an out. Blueprint can be an out. Burglar. Brainstorm. Seltzer.

That's not counting the times you'll reach ante 8 scoring 500k per hand played. In which case, VV is the safest boss to face.

Yes, it was orange stake with plasma deck, but it's quite a coincidence that playing my first game in weeks, just a few hours ago, the final boss was VV and I won.

steamcommunity.com/app/2379780/discussions/0/6832610053157454007/#c4424310458749556206

[NamelessJPEG]

Maybe you're right. But sometimes there is a feeling of bad rng. I'm trying to build an economy and find a base for combos in the first 2-3 ante, when the blinds do not pose a threat. After that, the game stops giving any options for good synergy. I've seen this in similar games like Slay the spire, dicey dungeons etc.

[malogoss]

Building an economy early is always a good move, once you know you'll survive the next blind.

Trying to establish a scoring combo that early is, in poker terms, going all in, more often than not. For me, scaling jokers are the top early priority. At ante 5 it's already too late for most scaling jokers.

What the game gives you at ante 6 is the same it gives you at ante 1. Well, except for a few tags that simply can't appear early and a few blind bosses too. It'll be much easier to make sound decisions once you are really convinced that the game is not working for or against you in any mean. RNG is RNG. Same goes for Wheel of Fortune 1 in 4 odds that many complain about, because it never feels like 1 in 4. Same goes for Time Eater in StS, of course you'll always face it when you have an infinite build, because that's all we remember. The 2 in 3 times it's not Time Eater, we don't even bother remembering.

The main point of such games is to find a way to reduce RNG variance to a strict minimum. It took around 150 hours before the switch finally flipped for me in Balatro. Before that, I was not the boss. The game was the boss.

[Yossarian]

Originally posted by NamelessJPEG:

Maybe you're right. But sometimes there is a feeling of bad rng. I'm trying to build an economy and find a base for combos in the first 2-3 ante, when the blinds do not pose a threat. After that, the game stops giving any options for good synergy. I've seen this in similar games like Slay the spire, dicey dungeons etc.

I think you're onto something about the bad RNG. IMHO it's not that VV is unfair, it's that like a lot of Balatro RNG, it seems malevolent. I just lost an Ante 8 Gold Chip to VV where literally every other Big Boss (with bad draws) would have been an auto-win for me, but VV AND bad draws is a loss so of course there's no doubt that VV shows and there's no reroll in sight.

[malogoss]

Originally posted by VampireYossarian:

I think you're onto something about the bad RNG. IMHO it's not that VV is unfair, it's that like a lot of Balatro RNG, it seems malevolent.

Some players have beaten gold stake 15 times in a row, rotating through the 15 decks.

Seems like the RNG is very poorly rigged against us, there's room for improvement.

[NamelessJPEG]

Yesterday i had a good try with unreal goldfish luck. My flushes were very strong. Can you imagine my face when I didn't get a single flush for 8 ante?

[senitewolf]

Originally posted by VampireYossarian:

Originally posted by NamelessJPEG:

Maybe you're right. But sometimes there is a feeling of bad rng. I'm trying to build an economy and find a base for combos in the first 2-3 ante, when the blinds do not pose a threat. After that, the game stops giving any options for good synergy. I've seen this in similar games like Slay the spire, dicey dungeons etc.

I think you're onto something about the bad RNG...

Yes, but other's have beaten them to it I'm afraid. The thing they're onto is called perception bias and a well-known phenomenon.

[Dervish]

I love it when people list jokers that would be helpful, as if you can just buy any one whenever and aren't bound by an RNG store...

Originally posted by VampireYossarian:

IMHO it's not that VV is unfair, it's that like a lot of Balatro RNG, it seems malevolent.

Take spectral card that coverts all the cards to the same suit, then you better expect the next boss blind to be that suit de-buffed

(although as the post above says, I agree its probs just perception bias)

[Chojoukif]

I think there's always some luck involved in Balatro but I wouldn't say anything in the game is outright unfair. Its fairly common that one of the blinds is going to counter what your deck is doing, but you always have a bit of time to prepare, whether it be by rerolling the blind, switching up some Jokers as needed, fishing for some good tarot cards to hold for the boss etc.

Imo there are way more unfair blinds in the game, like the blind which shuffles all your jokers face down, which in some cases can be fatal because the multipliers are not getting applied correctly so it literally doesn't matter what you play, you just can't win, and as an added bonus you can't even use luchador to save yourself because its impossible to tell which one of the jokers it is (I mean, if all your other jokers give score you can throw one hand down the drain to figure it out but it might come down to a 50/50 or a 33% depending on what you are running). I am just thinking about this now, but I wonder if you could manmode it and just fix the order while the jokers are face down? It never occured to me to try it but if its possible then I take it back, even this blind is not that bad.

I would say the game is balanced in a way that once you get out of the early game you have a pretty good chance to win if you play well.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Chojoukif:

I think there's always some luck involved in Balatro but I wouldn't say anything in the game is outright unfair. Its fairly common that one of the blinds is going to counter what your deck is doing, but you always have a bit of time to prepare, whether it be by rerolling the blind, switching up some Jokers as needed, fishing for some good tarot cards to hold for the boss etc.

Imo there are way more unfair blinds in the game, like the blind which shuffles all your jokers face down, which in some cases can be fatal because the multipliers are not getting applied correctly so it literally doesn't matter what you play, you just can't win, and as an added bonus you can't even use luchador to save yourself because its impossible to tell which one of the jokers it is (I mean, if all your other jokers give score you can throw one hand down the drain to figure it out but it might come down to a 50/50 or a 33% depending on what you are running). I am just thinking about this now, but I wonder if you could manmode it and just fix the order while the jokers are face down? It never occured to me to try it but if its possible then I take it back, even this blind is not that bad.

I would say the game is balanced in a way that once you get out of the early game you have a pretty good chance to win if you play well.

Yes, you can fix the order of jokers on that boss. If you turn down the gamespeed from 4x it's pretty much trivial. There's also people who grab an important joker before it shuffles them, which apparently the game honors and only shuffles the rest, though I consider that a bit of a cheat so I never tried it myself.