Thread 723563162

Genuine question. I don't understand the following of this game. Its what? Almost a decade old, but still has a playerbase of nearly 20k daily, has content creators that spit out videos pretty much daily, with like 10k hours played..simply how?
I understand the amount of time people dedicate to this game in a moba or online rts or whatever but how is that possible with a singleplayer game that hasn't got any updated for years? What is there that binds people to this game and causes the average content fag to dump 6k hours into it?
Are they just dopamine addicts?

>>723563162 (OP)
I challenge you to a duel in a children's card game

>>723563162 (OP)
It's a good game, people play and replay good games. Also the sequel is almost out, they might practice for that too, and hype.

>>723563162 (OP)
Im a long time mtga player so hopefully i can shed some light.
Slay the spire has a deceptively high skill ceiling. I've played mtga since it's release, hit mythic top 500 every season i play and there is nothing to it.
Copy and paste a constructed deck with a guaranteed winrate, learn it and the meta over 25 ish games and you can grind any rank you want there's nothing to it.
Sts, going for a high winrate on a20 is the polar opposite. There's hundreds of choices that can make or break your run, and you really don't know what your doing until you have atleast 1000 hours played.
Its like chess

>>723563162 (OP)
it's well balanced, despite having enough variance and RNG to keep each run feel fresh and challenging.
it's close to a perfect game imo

>>723563694
>people play and replay good games
Not all the time. Sometimes people don't play good games and play bad games instead so I think OP is justified in his question.

>>723563863
Why do you fags insert anime characters in games with completely contradictory astethics? Its the same thing with skyrim, that shit looks cheap out of place, and pathetic in slay the spire.

>>723564179
Slay the Spire's flash graphics look worse than Dohna Dohna by far

Monster Train is better

>>723563863
god what a faggot, just everything

I've got around thousand hours on it since 2020 and also watch some streamers from time to time and although i can beat A20H every now and again I still wouldn't consider myself good at it and still enjoy trying new things and getting better all the time. It just has a really nice balance where each run feels fresh enough that you're not just doing the same things but familiar enough that you can apply what you've previously learned to make better decisions going forward.

>>723564314
Some people are niggers who eat shit and they actually post on this board and you can ask them about it.

>>723564339
But there's niggers out there with 5000+ hours, that's more than most people have in dota 2, and it's pretty common to.
I just don't get how the game has enough content to keep people entertained for THAT long.
They must be dopamine addicts at the very least.

Do you understand how roguelites work?
The game is a system for generating novel situations. Randomness accomplishes what the variable of other players would in a multiplayer game.

>>723564574
Lmfao I understood that my first 10 minutes playing my first roguelike when I was 12 years old.
Still does not change the fact that people dump absurd amounts of time into sts that is only justified in a comp game with constant updates. They ran out of fresh content probably on their 1500 mark.

>>723564569
my point is that after 1000 hours it's still extremely engaging and I haven't even got good at it yet. I don't see it falling off anytime soon, if anything I can only see myself getting more and more into it as I improve. So it's very easy to see how people get 5000+ hours. Like the other guy says, it has an absurdly high skill ceiling.

>>723563162 (OP)
Bro play any constructed format in the big 3 online tcgs.
The skill ceiling difference is so vast in slay the spire compared to them it's more vast than the stars in the galaxy. ( i say this in a comedy sense but you get the idea)

>>723563819
>despite having enough variance and RNG to keep each run feel fresh and challenging.
Lol.
Lmao.
Surely you can't be serious.
There's barely enough to make 3 totally unique playthroughs.
By the time you get a double digit number of playthroughs, you'll have seen everything the game has to offer.

>>723563162 (OP)
One of the original RNG Progression games, anon
It's basically aimed at retarded autistics who think 'rng' is difficulty and zoom-zooms who have no concept of balance game design

>>723563709
Case in point
you get bad rng and you're fucked, anon

The funniest thing is how the devs of Darkest Dungeon 2 were so thirsty that they went full retarded to copy the gameplay structure of Slay The Spire making it as unfun as possible and adding carriage travel between nodes. They managed to fuck the game so badly that it barely hits 800 players on a weekly, while Slay The Spire still got those absurd numbers because it's a simple and fun game that is easy to mod.

>>723565598
I have near a 95% winrate on A15 so no I don't agree with your premise, its logically impossible.

>Play Silent
>Get a spam deck going
>Act 3
>Time fucker
>Nononono
>Look for scaling cards the entire act, even pick a up a speculative nightmare hoping that I might be able to nightmare a wraithform with retain or anything that will help me
>Find nothing useful
>Die
I HATE the slug nigger

I think it has several components
1. You can go REALLY REALLY fast. Both input, animation, shopping.
2. If you get a shit run and start having skill issues, you can start taking less risk. Or you can gamble on getting good draws/cards, and take riskier fights for more chance of rewards
3.You can fuck up really really bad, and difficulty progression s really good. A lot of similar games have you coast until you get to a stat check and just risk dying to bad rolls

>>723566156
>He ran out of time

>>723563162 (OP)
I'm with you
>hear about the game for years
>got nothing better to do, download it
>play around five or six runs
>beat the game with 3 characters + the brain with the fourth
>Is that it?
>Look up online
>apparently that's it.

Really?
People talks about variety, but the game has jack shit amount of enemies.
It's EXTREMELY repetitive.

It's just skinner box dopamine trap for autists.

>>723567364
Isn't every online mp game, mmo, and roguelike though?

>>723564339
>can beat A20H every now and again I still wouldn't consider myself good at it

I guarantee at least 95% of players will never beat A20, let alone the Heart.

It’s a really good game actually, I got bored with it when I got all the character to rank 4 or 5 because then it became some meta game about having the correct deck. I liked the melee dude because I built a deck that was just EATING the enemies to increase my hp, but then of course the next run I get the shittiest cards ever. That type of random bullshit is why I hate video games.

>>723563162 (OP)
Mods give it endless replay value

>>723568024
Ah yes.
The Skyrim stratagem.

>>723567364
The skinner box still need to be good if you are going to keep playing it.

>>723568024
I've personally found the mods drop off after a while whereas the vanilla game never gets stale. They're actually pretty interesting to see why people play the base game for so long, as it's balanced so much better than the fanmade efforts.

If you look at the streamers who have the thousands and thousands of hours on it, they'll play the mods a bit but ultimately end up going back to the regular game pretty quickly.

>>723568512
>vanilla game never gets stale.
How? There are like a dozen enemies that always do the same shit.

>card battle
>pick your route on map
>die all the time and unlock small upgrades along the way

>>723568608
there's infinite combinations of the various elements and they have the right number of relics, cards, enemies, situations, maps etc to make it feel fair but tough each time. With the mods they're never balanced right because they didn't spend years analysing and tweaking everything based on loads of data feedback and so an obvious solution usually becomes obvious and it gets boring. But with vanilla after years and years of millions of people playing it all the time it's still not solved and frequently challenging.

>>723566838
>Brain
Nigga are you AI?

>>723568202
>>723568512
Mods are cancer in most cases.

I can see the appeal of trying Cryptic for Balatro once or twice, but not more.
Similarly TES game mods don't have strong enough gameplay to add major alterations and pull it off.

>>723565814
not him but, the average normie who gets addicted to games like this isn't going to "git gud" and is just going to brute force it hoping that good RNG carries them to a win

>>723567654
What do you mean by every mp game?

>>723563162 (OP)
It's a great game, probably one of the best games ever made.

>>723563162 (OP)
have you played it?

>>723568770
>>die all the time
Love how you tried sneaking that in so casually as if no one would notice.

>>723569162
No, fuck, I just misthought.

>>723565814
Do a16 or above

It's RNG at higher levels
Now you can argue that the entire concept of a16 and above isn't balanced and I agree - it's an example of how fucked the game is since the developers never bothhered about balance

>>723569296
how is someone altering a their single player game cancer? it doesn't affect you in any way

>>723563162 (OP)
it's one of the best games ever made, simple as

Bros why do people enjoy things? Genuine question. I just don't understand it

>>723571540
>Now you can argue that the entire concept of a16 and above isn't balanced and I agree - it's an example of how fucked the game is since the developers never bothhered about balance
nta but A20 feels very winnable more often than not. Gold stake balatro feels like a fucking unbalanced mess where you live or die based on shop offers

Recently went back to it after not playing for years to finally do A20. I had an amazing time doing it.
Still I find it hard to really articulate why it's so good.
I really appreciate the mundanity of it. Relics, cards, upgrading don't really stand out that much but it all comes to together to something beautiful.

In other deckbuilders you also start with basic cards but as soon you add a new card and upgrade it it's often 10x-100x better already than the rest of your cards.
In spire an upgrade may only yield like +3 from 9 to 12dmg but sometimes that's all you need to push you through the early game and then your deck just comes together.

>>723571540
>It's RNG at higher levels
It isn't because there are people that reach 90% win rate on asc 20

>>723572213
Lifecoach has a near 95% winrate with watcher and goes on winstreaks of like 30+ a time lol. The other guy is coping.

>>723573469
Are these cards that are good for your deck?

People that complain about the difficulty are people that struggle using complicated relics like the velvet choker or the pyramid (like me)

No, silly, groups of four of them will have some sort connection between them.
Could be related to the artwork, in-game effect, category or even some more esoteric topics.

Too long, didn't read
Never reached ascension 5 or whatever it's called
Still one of the best indie games released last decade

>>723571540
Xecnar sends his regards

>>723563162 (OP)
Spire is great but every person who has stuck with spire to at least A10 (IE you clearly like deckbuilders) needs to check out Chrono Ark. It's not A20 level difficult, but it is so mechanically rewarding to play. The music is also surprisingly amazing. The story elements I personally think suck dick and aren't worth your time. Boilerplate anime trope story.

>play a couple of runs of slay the spire
>get an OP win by having a nicely convergent synergy of relics and cards
>oh i guess this is the strat
>play more runs
>always click the pieces of that one run when you see them
>don't always see the other pieces
>ignore other synergies and strats you've never thought about
>fucking trash rngfest

>>723563162 (OP)
I fucking hate this game so much, but I can't stop playing. I think it's because it scratches the same itch as gambling.

>>723577506
Lmao can't make this shit up >>723577608

>>723577807
wut

>>723578076
NTA but the connection is pretty clear

>>723578076
You're a troglodyte if you don't understand the difference between using what is provided versus brute forcing the same build over and over until the stars align again. It's a degenerate play style that misses the entire point of what makes the game great. Go play trash like balatro, that is more your speed.

>>723578502
You're an animefag so your opinion doesn't matter to me.

>have a well rounded build
>boss fight starts
>he doesn't attack
>I pull all defense cards
>when he does a major attack that does 80% of my health, I pull zero defense cards
>HURR DURR IT'S NOT RNG DEPENDENT

You are a dumb retard.

>>723578865
Crying about anime on this board, you should be bullied

>>723578865
your well rounded deck didn't have enough draw and consistency to get set up in two turns and you hadn't saved a decent potion for the potentially scary boss fight and that one turn completely ended your run?

i mean it is possible but the better you get the less likely you can make it

>>723579039
Not crying, just expressing the disdain I have for someone that is presumably an adult and still watches cartoons made for literal children.

>>723579152
>dude how come you didn't have a potion that is entirely dependent on RNG at hand?

>>723579264
the entire game and genre is about bending rng to your will. your whole goal should be to make it exceedingly unlikely that you just die turn 2 and it's demonstrably achievable

>>723564737
"content" is a misnomer in RL terminology, you don't see things once and consider it completed, it just adds to the increasingly long rulebook of the game
>Lmfao I understood that my first 10 minutes playing my first roguelike when I was 12 years old.
Apparently not, sounds like your first RL was slop like Hades or RoR2

>>723579185
The irony while posting about video games, here is your last reply.

>>723579393
>bending RNG to your will
>dude just change the outcome of a predetermined game by manifesting it with the law of attraction or some other new age bullshit

I'd rather just play a better game, tyvm

>>723579689
It took you this long to think of such a pathetic comeback? A lot of games are made for adults, but cartoons are always meant for children.

Keep coping, weeblet.

>>723579846
i don't really have any investment in you playing it more, but i'm not talking about just manifesting good results. i'm talking about selectively picking your cards and getting draw and powerful cards and farming potions and saving them for the crucial fights and thinning bad cards and farming elites for powerful relics etc until you're in a position where you can be almost guaranteed to get your powerful stuff in play quickly rather than drawing 5 defends on turn one and 5 strikes on turn two and still thinking you have a powerful deck lol

For some reason Slay the Spire never clicked with me despite liking roguelikes and MTG. I'm going to try giving it another shot with 2 on the horizon.
Are there any obvious tricks or is the game just getting used to how all the decks can play and having a better sense of what nodes to choose?

>>723564569
They must play with mods too.

>>723573469
Halt, Evolve, Nightmare and Intimidate all have a slime on the artwork.

Mettalicize, Cloak Clasp, Orichalcum and Like Water give Armor at the end of turn.

Simmering Fury, Doppelgänger, Pocketwatch and Predator make you draw cards at the start of your next turn.

The other 4 are all relics? But so was cloak clasp so I don't know exactly.

>>723580440
the key is to not lock yourself into thinking of "builds" and just taking cards that solve problems you have. synergies are key to the game but it's very fluid and you don't have to commit to any one thing.

>>723580241
Maybe that works for lower ascension levels.

>>723580734
Your brain is the lowest possible ascension level if that was your takeaway.

>>723580440
Combats are almost always better than events. Though they can fuck you up, but imo it's better to get used to taking a majority combats.
Try to take an upgrade or two, a shop, or just some luck before attempting elites. Take as many as you think can handle. Also save the potions for them.
If you added a lot of cards that have good upgrades then take more bonfires than you usually would.
Thinking short term is usually good. Taking cards just because they are good against upcoming elites and the upcoming act boss.
Better to have a couple meh cards overall but that completely fuck over certain fights.

>>723581030
My IQ is 152 (tested)
What is yours?

>>723563162 (OP)
Because it's addictive. They studied the Gamemaker's Toolkit (TM) and made you want to pull the lever over and over. That's what roguelite is about really.
The game is such utter shit in every way, outside of an addictive gameplay loop. 0/10 graphics, sound, music, story. It's disgusting.

>>723581093
My guy, you have already spectacularly failed by writing that in sincerity as a response. You don't have a leg to stand on.

>>723581031
>Combats are almost always better than events. Though they can fuck you up, but imo it's better to get used to taking a majority combats.
Do not do this after asc 15 lol

>>723581031
>Combats are almost always better than events. Though they can fuck you up, but imo it's better to get used to taking a majority combats.
Do not not do this after asc 15 lol

>>723580652
>>723581031
Thanks, sounds like some good rough ideas for a newbie.
I was thinking not to take good cards if it didn't fit a theme but I'll just throw everything in a see how it rolls. Feel like keeping your deck thin in deckbuilders is a good idea to draw what you need but it does kind of look like the later cards are always better and maybe I'm trying to run before I can walk.

>>723581431
IQlet spotted

so is the meta to have as little cards as posible?

>>723584135
It's usually better to have fewer cards as it makes your draws more consistent, but you still need some defend/attack cards. Most decks want some draw so you don't brick and draw a hand full of useless shit.

>>723584135
There is no meta. Thats the beauty of the game. Generally for most builds yes smaller is better it just depends.

>>723563162 (OP)
It's an extremely good game that works well both in a "tee hee i clicka da cards" way and poopsocking and thinking every action and play for 30 minutes. There's variety in card selection and what you're offered on any given run so it works well as a spectator game, while still having good enough variety to keep throwing shit at you when you play it yourself. There are other similar games but StS is so well made (Without getting too obtuse or confusing) it's still the gold standard. On top of that it's very moddable and there are multiple large mods out there if you wanna fuck around with your cards even more

>>723584135
That's one solution, but there are many and it's not always possible.
Sometimes one of the best runs you will ever have is one where you have up to 35 cards, sometimes it will be when you have 5 cards.

>>723578502
>Go play trash like balatro, that is more your speed.
NTA but I'm worse at Balatro than I am at StS

>>723584135
fwiw the undisputed best player usually has mid 30ish cards doing A20 runs. That's just his style, but it is hard to argue with his results.

Monster Train is better.

>>723585283
That's the point, anon. Balatro is far more rng dependent and far less skill dependent than StS. It's much more of a slot machine gamble than something that can be mitigated with skill.

>>723585418
It's way too easy.

>>723585495
This doesn't conflict with my statement.

>>723585418
Monster Train is total slop. 2 is a big improvement over 1, but it is still garbage.

>>723585495
The first one, if you take every single malus you can, is pretty hard.

>>723585539
It does because it's boring as shit so it's simply not a better game.

>>723578865
You play a game that's less complex than Yugioh and think you're a genius. Don't make me laugh.

>find chink mod
>shit just displays numbers but no text in English
>try to translate it
>still doesn't work
fug
Also The Invincible character was a fun gimmick with the bingo board even if it was way easier than normal runs.

>>723585473
That's reassuring to read. I fucking hate that game because it feels like a restart until you highroll simulator.

>>723588174
Balatro is a far cry from how balanced StS is, but is still balanced enough that allows best players to demonstrate nigh 100% winrate on gold stake.
I guess the black deck is kind of fucked in that regard, but other than that, every gold stake run is winnable. Stop skipping blinds and wasting money, idk

>>723589627
Drop some players that I can follow to improve my game then

>>723589849
It's hard to argue against what Dr Spectred does or says. I don't think you really need anyone else to help you figure the game out. It's not deep enough to warrant a player like xecnar to make a point about anything in it.

>>723580440

In Act 1, take cards that will help you beat the Act 1 boss even if you don't necessarily need them later.
In Act 2, work towards making your deck good enough to beat Act 3.
In Act 3, make sure your deck is as good as it can be going into the boss and possibly Act 4.

All decks need offensive cards and defensive cards, and nearly all decks benefit greatly from card draw and energy management. Prioritize offense slightly over defense. Always work towards building towards what your deck is lacking in. and keep in mind the notable enemies it might struggle with on an act-to-act basis while going through each act when making decisions (i.e., some decks will struggle with Snecko, others will have issues with Transient, etc.)
Elites are almost always better than a normal combat if you can handle the elites. You'll never see the same elite twice in a row, so keep in mind what you've fought so you're prepared for what you might fight next.
If you see a relic at any point during your run and don't take it, you'll not see that relic again for the rest of the run. Keep that in mind when choosing shop relics or deciding when you want to get the Sapphire Key.
Boss Energy relics are very useful, but often have diminishing returns unless you have the draw to take advantage of the extra energy.
Think of the game in terms of resource management. Your health, your gold, your potions, your deck, your relics all contribute to your total resources. It may be better in many cases to take a small amount of damage to deal more damage to an enemy if it prevents taking more damage later.

Probably the most important thing to always remember is that adding cards to your deck is significantly easier than removing them. Don't necessarily add cards to your deck just because they're good cards, or there's the potential for a good combo with the rest of your deck, because making your deck too fat will make it harder to get the cards you need at the time you need them.

>>723563162 (OP)
Chrono Ark and Monster Train 2 are both better than Slay the Spire.
But maybe Slay the Spire 2 will be a big improvement.

>>723563162 (OP)
I don't get how you can get a winrate above 50%, but it tells me the game is of skill and isn't RNG.

>>723563162 (OP)
It's an NPC time wasting skinner box.

>>723566838
I solved the game in my first run when I realized it's all about stacking damage bonuses and using attack cards that multply that bonus. Each deck just has different combos for stacking bonuses. In other words, draft good cards and don't draft bad cards because they dilute your deck then burn through your deck and play as many cards as possible during a battle. That's the whole game.

>>723592517
>Beat the 3rd Act in A0
>I solved the game
Okay

>>723592753
I logically inferred that higher difficulties would force me to stick to this strategy even more closely because the DPS or defense check would be greater. I then uninstalled the game and played something else.
> tfw literally too smart to enjoy indieshit

>>723593080
You should probably give the game another try.

>>723593504
Why? Is there another layer to the gameplay that I'm missing?
> draft strong cards
> don't draft weak cards because they dilute your deck
> draw and play as many strong cards as you can

That's it. It's that simple.

>>723593821
why did developers add bad cards in the first place?

>>723594148

Even the 'bad' cards can be good in certain circumstances.

>>723594195
Give an example.

>>723563162 (OP)
rogueadjacent is the most powerful genre

>>723593821
The "strength" of the card varies wildly depending on context of at what point you are in the game, how well you're doing, and your current deck.
>>723594263
Take for example barricade: It's a card that lets you keep your block between turns and costs 3 energy (2 if it's upgraded). If you take that card early on it's a huge nuisance because you don't have enough block to make the surplus worth it and generally you don't want to add block to the deck early on specially on a character that likes to go on the offensive like ironclad. Later in the game, you might run into a situation where you got a couple good block cards that synergize with each other and at that point you'll be looking more favorably to cards that capitalize of off your defense, like body slam and this, and finding this and some other good block cards let's you use entrench to make a super powerful endgame build.

>>723595167
It does not vary wildly. Barricade is one of those cares that allows you to stack a bonus. Stacking bonuses is necessary to win so you always want to draw it. There are only 3 bonuses you can stack if I remember correctly: damage, block, poison. It's that simple!

>>723595478
>It does not vary wildly
I just explained how and why it does, I wrote it in the post you just read.

>>723566156
saaaar

>>723596185
I'm not Indian I just like blue retards.

>>723596281
Fair enough defect is my favorite character

>>723595478
What bonus does dead branch give?
What about seek?
What about scrawl?
What about corruption?
What about vault?

>>723565561
what does "totally unique" mean in your case?
I haven't had a single non-"totally unique" playthrough in my 3k+ hours (a run where I took the same route, cards, relics and fought the same bosses/enemies).
You're claim is just a straight up lie.