Slay the spire is basically Number Munchers 2.0

[THANKS OBAMA]

With a couple worded questions thrown in, and RNG that may lead you to lose no matter what.

Say I'm wrong.

[THANKS OBAMA]

Oh man, munch with an ER at the end is a blocked word?

[Sines]

Joinrbs has a very high success rate at Ascension 20. I think he mentioned it was 90% at some point? That might have been at only Ascension 10 or 15, whatever was the highest difficulty at the time.

A good player can achieve a near 100% win rate (without the bonus boss) on lower difficulties. RNG is important, but skill allows you to overcome bad luck.

[Songbird]

IDK, I've still literally never lost on ascension 0 outside of making clearly bad decisions because I was forced to trying to grind achievements (and I still got Common Sense on the second attempt--with the first being a successful run that was all common cards and a curse--and the one relic achievement on the second after dying to the act 3 boss).

RNG matters a fair bit on high ascension (e.g. you can just be offered absolutely no scaling or defense/sustain if you're very unlucky) but I can still often beat the heart with "pile of cards" decks that result when none of the strongest cards/relics (Well-laid Plans, Echo Form, etc.) make it into my deck and I'm forced to improvise by trying to squeeze value from what I get.

[RamboRusina]

I don't agree with OP at all. The bigger the deck you make the less control over it you have. Don't start game with plan of going with X deck but adjust your play on artifacts and cards you get. Remember that you don't have to take everything you find and you should get rid of cards that don't benefit you.

From standard game all the way to ascension 14 the game is fairly easy and quite forgiving after unlocking everything and learning synergies in game. Only time I've felt like you truly have to save scum in this game is doing asc 20 with the heart. I don't even want to think how many dozens of hours I sank into that.

[Zu]

Yes, if you make the conscious decision to take an abundance of skills at the start of a run because you don't give crappy damage cards enough credit, the quote unquote rng hammer will strike down upon thee with gremlin nob. Classic.

Now, you could blame the 1 in 3 (or 1 in 2 if it's your second elite), or you could learn from this and respect the big hunk o red by taking fewer skills and a few more simple damage cards.

[Moppy]

On standard difficulty level I do not believe any run is impossible to win. I would expect a good player to have 99% or better win rate for standard level (and the best on twitch were around this level way back ages ago before Ascension).

Ascension 20 on the other hand, is hard. The current best players might have a 40 or 50% win rate there. There's a few on twitch who hover around this percentage.

[DaBa]

Nah you just have to get good.

[Sekzon]

Originally posted by Sines:

Joinrbs has a very high success rate at Ascension 20. I think he mentioned it was 90% at some point? That might have been at only Ascension 10 or 15, whatever was the highest difficulty at the time.

i really believe that it's rigged or like a 3rd party program giving you insights like ppl use with poker games. no need to argue tho - i cant prove nor can someone disprove my assumptions.

on my games it sometimes even feels like its not rng but code giving the worse possible outcome to balance things.

[bulbatrs]

Originally posted by RamboRusina:

I don't agree with OP at all. The bigger the deck you make the less control over it you have. Don't start game with plan of going with X deck but adjust your play on artifacts and cards you get. Remember that you don't have to take everything you find and you should get rid of cards that don't benefit you.

From standard game all the way to ascension 14 the game is fairly easy and quite forgiving after unlocking everything and learning synergies in game. Only time I've felt like you truly have to save scum in this game is doing asc 20 with the heart. I don't even want to think how many dozens of hours I sank into that.

that's one sad way to ruin the experience of beating ascention 20 heart

[DuckSonata]

Originally posted by Sekzon:

Originally posted by Sines:

Joinrbs has a very high success rate at Ascension 20. I think he mentioned it was 90% at some point? That might have been at only Ascension 10 or 15, whatever was the highest difficulty at the time.

i really believe that it's rigged or like a 3rd party program giving you insights like ppl use with poker games. no need to argue tho - i cant prove nor can someone disprove my assumptions.

on my games it sometimes even feels like its not rng but code giving the worse possible outcome to balance things.

This guy knows. It's like I've been saying for years, it's all a big setup. All the top streamers have teams of analysts picking apart the code in real time and feeding them information about which choices will trigger the malicious auto-lose code. They all wear green body suits so they won't show up against the green screen background. They have to whisper their instructions into headset mics so they won't get picked up by the streamer's mic, which is why all the streamers wear headphones so they can amplify the volume. There's no need to argue because you can't disprove any of this.

Doing all of this in real time is tricky, and sometimes the analysts need a little extra time to catch up. So streamers have developed all sorts of stalling tactics to cover for this. Pretending to "think about the problem" (yeah right) only gets you so far. The better streamers will do stuff like stage a fake conversation with a plant in the chat, or have one of their people make a fake donation with a provocative message. The true pros will arrange to have a "pet" just happen to "wander in" at exactly the right time. Very rarely, they will hire a crisis actor to pose as a girlfriend or boyfriend, but that's a bit of a desperation play.

So, obviously, this sort of thing isn't going to go unnoticed by game developers that are smart enough to make a game that can detect when you're winning too much and adjust just enough to force you to lose in precisely equal measure. There's been this running 4-D chess game between the developers and the crackers (people trying to crack the game, not white people) pretty much since the beginning. All those weekly "updates" during "early access" (if there even is such a thing) were really just the developers' side of an incredibly sophisticated arms race.

As an example of how cerebral these conflicts can get, take a look at mod support. It presents as a pretty clear trap, because why would the devs expose the inner workings of their game to the enemy otherwise? But it's such a good opportunity that the crackers pretty much have to at least investigate it to see. It will probably be false code, designed to either misdirect or dispirit the attackers, but maybe the creators will inadvertently reveal something useful. Or, maybe it's a triple bluff. For their part, the crackers also have an opportunity to play the disinformation game by publishing false mods, which will raise similar questions for the developers. It's psychological warfare at the highest level. Take my advice and just walk away before you become a sacrificial pawn for one side or the other.

[Khor]

Originally posted by faceplant712:

!steamsilver

[Moppy]

Originally posted by Sekzon:

i really believe that it's rigged or like a 3rd party program giving you insights like ppl use with poker games. no need to argue tho - i cant prove nor can someone disprove my assumptions.

All unverifiiable statements are equally true and false. Therefore I prefer the explanation that the CIA orders a magic fairy to mind-control you to always pick the wrong card. no need to argue tho - i cant prove nor can someone disprove my assumptions.

[Sekzon]

Originally posted by faceplant712:

Originally posted by Sekzon:

i really believe that it's rigged or like a 3rd party program giving you insights like ppl use with poker games. no need to argue tho - i cant prove nor can someone disprove my assumptions.

on my games it sometimes even feels like its not rng but code giving the worse possible outcome to balance things.

.. awitty attempt to be funny ..

fair enough tho its really not wizardry but just code. if you knew what i was referring to youd act differently. maybe check out how it works on poker games? like said no sense in a discussion since you cant disprove. fairy comparison us really bad because my assumption is within whats possible and happening in other places too~

[DuckSonata]

Originally posted by Sekzon:

Originally posted by faceplant712:

.. awitty attempt to be funny ..

fair enough tho its really not wizardry but just code. if you knew what i was referring to youd act differently. maybe check out how it works on poker games? like said no sense in a discussion since you cant disprove. fairy comparison us really bad because my assumption is within whats possible and happening in other places too~

Don't get me started on poker. You really think it stops at simple overlays telling you hand strength and the pot odds for your draw? I remember there used to be a flaw in the shuffle algorithm a bunch of the companies used. A guy wrote a utility that 100% could tell you the outcome of the hand just by looking at your hole cards and a few board cards, no cracking the client required.

Unfortunately, he only did that to demonstrate the weakness to the poker companies, so that got patched, but even so you wouldn't believe some of the cheating tools people come up with, or the countermeasures from the poker companies. Obviously cameras and microphones are typical targets, but they also go after headphones and speakers so they can blare loud, distracting noises at you during your turn. There's even one that hacks the keyboard into breaking a few of your fingers.

I mean, this arms race has been going on as long as gambling has existed. It's at the point where it so dominates the game that ordinary people can't get a fair shake anymore. Same story as Slay the Spire, really. All the anti-cheating measures apply equally to the cheater and to the innocent civilian, with the net effect that the game is massively unfair to the non-cheater. You pretty much have to cheat just to get back up to zero. It's like we both said before, it's all rigged, so it's definitely never our fault when we lose, and therefore there's no need for self-examination or change.

[Baxsta Trueswift]

REEEEEEEEtarded game that has to be Free to Play