> I still quite like Balatro - when it works it's a blast
I enjoyed Balatro for quite a few hours before I had this problem, which is more than enough for me to call it a good game.
Beyond these first few hours though, you need ridiculously high multipliers to succeed. There's way too many jokers and 90% of them are trash by this point. The ones you need have vanishingly small probabilities, and then you need to add those probabilities together to get the combo of jokers required.
I would start a run, and within the first few minutes I would know that the RNG hadn't given me what I needed, reset, start again, repeat.
I looked up some guides, and they'd recommend using specific legendary jokers, which over my entire time playing (maybe 15 hours?) I didn't encounter even once. The only way to get them would be to play hundreds or even thousands of times.
At that point, it doesn't feel like a game anymore. It feels like a gambling addiction.
For me, that's time to call it quits. But I do wonder if the same people who struggle with gambling addiction in the real world are the ones who continue playing here.
At least with Balatro there is ten hours worth of game before your reach this point.
People win streak gold stake Balatro, A20H slay the spire, unfair slice and dice, and plenty of other games in this category. Nothing wrong with playing a game for 10 hours and being done with it but calling them rng fiestas just because you can’t beat the game on the hardest difficulty every time after 10 hours is a bit dismissive of the level of effort that is put in to getting these games as tightly tuned as they are.
I'm not GP, but I thought I'd weigh in given I basically started this thread. I watch Balatro University who has the longest gold stake streak in Balatro, and while I respect that, I don't think that counters the point that the genre is heavily dependent on RNG. Winning isn't fun by default, and neither is losing boring. But you can win in ways that are boring (e.g. by getting a "broken" start and crushing through all stages) and lose in ways that are boring (e.g. by getting terrible rng that makes each round a slog until you finally lose.) With a rogue{like, lite} you are always at the mercy of RNG to see which of the {win, lose} x {fun, boring} combos you're in for, which when you're busy and have limited time to play games is extremely discouraging.
Hades is fun because there is some skill involved with the button mashing to go with the RNG, but it feels like too many games are just dressed up gambling mechanics these days. Balatro is too naked and bare with being clever gambling, plus all the ding ding ding slot machine dopamine special effects.
Hades relies too heavily on meta progression. You are supposed to grind before winning. The game is not balanced around your original state. I personally hate that because I view it as the game wasting my time but I can understand how it’s supposed to be enjoyable.
Balatro has a different issue for me. Despite having a lot of joker it sometimes feels very RNG reliant and limited once you reach high stakes. Plus the difficulty rises somehow artificially by withdrawing options rather than expending the challenge.
Slay the Spire remains unbeatable for me. No other game has the same level of complexity. You get all the tool to limit variance but every choice becomes very significant.
I don’t know how to understand your comment. The goal of Slay the Spire is to climb all the way to the heart while picking cards and beating it, preferably on A20 - all the other difficulty levels being basically a tutorial leading to the real game. There is no moment involving all the players of the world and the game is generally very slow so I’m a bit lost.
I swear I remember that when you get to the heart, you get to see something like "you need [huge number] of total damage, damage that has been applied [medium number gets increased by your measly tiny damage]" or maybe "health left [huge non-round number gets decreased by very little]" and then your character dies
I just assumed that it's some online thing where it counts total damage from everyone to finally slay that heart "together"
You get your score shown as damage once you beat the act 3 boss(es) and then go on to act 4 to fight the final boss if you properly collected the three keys which unlock it while climbing.
I enjoyed Balatro for quite a few hours before I had this problem, which is more than enough for me to call it a good game.
Beyond these first few hours though, you need ridiculously high multipliers to succeed. There's way too many jokers and 90% of them are trash by this point. The ones you need have vanishingly small probabilities, and then you need to add those probabilities together to get the combo of jokers required.
I would start a run, and within the first few minutes I would know that the RNG hadn't given me what I needed, reset, start again, repeat.
I looked up some guides, and they'd recommend using specific legendary jokers, which over my entire time playing (maybe 15 hours?) I didn't encounter even once. The only way to get them would be to play hundreds or even thousands of times.
At that point, it doesn't feel like a game anymore. It feels like a gambling addiction.
For me, that's time to call it quits. But I do wonder if the same people who struggle with gambling addiction in the real world are the ones who continue playing here.
At least with Balatro there is ten hours worth of game before your reach this point.