Beat the game first try.

[Lazarix]

Is this normal or is it supposed to be hard? The last boss was so easy, i had some buff that made my armor not fall off after the turn and he didnt even do damage to me...

[Pixel Peeper]

Lots and lots of people win a run in less than 5 hours of total play time and many people manage to win on their first try, yes. Personally I believe I won on my 3rd try, with about 3 hours of total play time.

Indeed, this game is freakishly easy by "die-and-retry" standards.

[Sanity]

Roguelikes are about adapting to RNG and enjoying the various runs. Sometimes things fall into place and you get OpieOP build and other times its a real struggle of you don't make all the right choices.
The beauty of this game is replayability. Think FTL or Isaac.

[Sanity]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Lots and lots of people win a run in less than 5 hours of total play time and many people manage to win on their first try, yes. Personally I believe I won on my 3rd try, with about 3 hours of total play time.

Indeed, this game is freakishly easy by "die-and-retry" standards.

I have to disagree with the "freakishly easy" comment. This game is very much on pace difficulty wise (if not slightly harder) than games like FTL or Isaac.

Bare in mind it is early access, so options like Easy, Normal, Hard mode might be a thing in the future (effecting enemy stats and gold drop amount). So I'm comparing this to FTL on normal difficulty.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Sanity:

I have to disagree with the "freakishly easy" comment. This game is very much on pace difficulty wise (if not slightly harder) than games like FTL or Isaac.

Is it really that common for people to finish FTL on Normal difficulty or BoI on their very first attempt?

I know that finishing Nuclear Throne on your first attempt is unthinkable. Most people die hundreds or thousands of times before they manage it.

[Sanity]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Originally posted by Sanity:

I have to disagree with the "freakishly easy" comment. This game is very much on pace difficulty wise (if not slightly harder) than games like FTL or Isaac.

Is it really that common for people to finish FTL on Normal difficulty or BoI on their very first attempt?

I know that finishing Nuclear Throne on your first attempt is unthinkable. Most people die hundreds or thousands of times before they manage it.

FTL on normal with good drops (think BL2, Flaks), yes is very very common first time win. There's less mechanics here to get over considering card play, but I think they found a great balance on difficulty for Normal.

[Sanity]

I do want to reiterate that I'm saying "common" to win IFF you get good RNG. The thing about most roguelikes is developing the skill and knowledge to overcome mediocre RNG, which is the norm.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Sanity:

FTL on normal with good drops (think BL2, Flaks), yes is very very common first time win.

Well now you've completely changed the premise to only include the top 5% luckiest players.

And even then I don't believe you. Even if you made these weapons 100% chance drops during the run, I'm pretty sure most first-time players would still fail their run.

No, I expect that the odds of a newbie playing FTL on Normal difficulty managing to win their first run is less than one in a thousand.

[rav]

i dont think the game is too easy i just think it lacks a lot of content still

adding 1-2 more boss levels would automatically increase the difficulty.

[Sanity]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Well now you've completely changed the premise to only include the top 5% luckiest players.

And even then I don't believe you. Even if you made these weapons 100% chance drops during the run, I'm pretty sure most first-time players would still fail their run.

No, I expect that the odds of a newbie playing FTL on Normal difficulty managing to win their first run is less than one in a thousand.

I won my first run of FTL, and I know one other who has, and I certainly don't know that many people.

It's also not really fair to compare a turn based card game with a real time, pixel perfect bullet-hell shooter for difficulty (or any other real time game for that matter). Skill caps here are lower and making it any harder just turn it into an RNG-fest.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Sanity:

I won my first run of FTL, and I know one other who has, and I certainly don't know that many people.

Talk about small sample size...

I would wager that that's extremely exceptional. I expect that, even among people who set the difficulty to Easy for their first run, less than 1% of them won.

A first-time player playing on Normal is almost certain to fail.

[Maximum Sloth]

I played for 20 something hours before my first win.

[Sanity]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Talk about small sample size...

I would wager that that's extremely exceptional. I expect that, even among people who set the difficulty to Easy for their first run, less than 1% of them won.

A first-time player playing on Normal is almost certain to fail.

This is my last post since I feel like I'm talking to a wall... I mean, we're discussing opinions not empirical fact, so obviously there's no real sample size. And if there were, where are you possibly getting yours? :-p
(e/ this^ came off more heated than I meant! Was trying to be playful, sorry <3)

And regardless of FTL, my point for this game in terms of difficulty is:
1. I think a good majority of people lose this game first try. (obviously you're going to hear a lot from the people who win on here, but based on talking to people in twitch chat and other casual places I think you might be overestimating the win rate)
2. Being a turn based card game with (relatively) few mechanics, this game does not have a terribly steep learning curve or skill ceiling. Directly increasing the difficulty to overcome this will just increase dependency on RNG, which isn't helpful.
3. Deck builders have been quite popular since Dominion's release forever ago. A lot of strategies needed to win this are already commonplace in people who've been exposed (which are also the people most likely to search for a game like this while still in EA)

[Pixel Peeper]

When I play a game, I spend a lot of time on the relevant forums.

The vast majority of FTL posts were "it's too hard" and the rest were pretty much "I've had a half-dozen runs manage to reach the rebel flagship but I can't get past phase 2, help plz".

Virtually no one wins on their first try, and very, very few people within 5 hours. And that's on Easy. I actually doubt anyone, anyone at all, has played their first time on Normal and won. Not unless they'd watched a lot of gameplay first and gotten fairly lucky.

While in StS, which only has Normal difficulty, first-try wins (while of course not super common) aren't that rare and 3-to-5-hour win posts abound.

I'm reasonably certain that those two games' difficulty levels are nowhere near similar.

I'm pretty sure Slay the Spire is by far the easiest "die-and-retry" game I've ever seen.

[PuffinPie]

Barricade is a very op card. I also win no problem if i get that and a few sizable armor cards. A good balancer might be it goes away if ur armor ever hits zero (as the barricade broke) or you lose 2 dexterity in playing it. Either way, i can totally see someone winning in their first try if they pick up that card early.

[Lazarix]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1272564846 this was my build pretty much ;d