Thread 725486206

What can we learn from balatro success?

gamba GOOD

People are really weak to pscyhological tricks and numbers going up.

I like numbers going up
more games should have cards and numbers going up, I think.

>>725486206 (OP)
gambling is fun

I learne form the weird push back thay some people are incredible dumb and superficial. Lost count of the amount of times I saw people handwave this games because "it's just gambling"

>>725486206 (OP)
cards are FUN

I learned from the weird push back that some people are incredibly dumb and superficial. Lost count of the number of times I saw people handwave this game because "it's just gambling"

It's literally not gambling lmao. I enjoyed balatro though it's a flawed game. Gold wasn't a fun difficulty. Well worth 15 bucks tho.

>>725486206 (OP)
Sometimes all you need for a good game is numbers doing really really really funny things.

>>725486206 (OP)
One of the things the dev mentioned in interviews that he purposely didn't play a bunch of other roguelikes because he thought he would be influenced by them, and particularly cited that he played Slay the Spire after Balatro came out and he's sure he would have copied spire's map system if he played it beforehand.
The point is that most devs try too hard to copy existing games instead of being original with their games.

>>725486206 (OP)
Same thing you could learn from Vampire Survivors' success.

gameplay is all that matters

Not to get cynical over genres. People were already shitting on roguelites only for LocalThunk to make one without irony and remind everyone why they're popular.

>>725487779
Pretty sure he actually said Slay the Spire was the only game he did play a little of before releasing Balatro just to see how it did things.

Balatro has one song and it's so good I haven't gotten tired of it after 80 hours of playing. As soon as I heard it in the trailer I downloaded the demo, and bought it right up.

>>725488450
>As soon as I heard it in the trailer I downloaded the demo, and bought it right up.

I had little interest in Balatro until I saw the trailer with the audio on, and somehow the music hooked me in (combined with the auditory feedback). It's damn good.

>>725488064
Explain RDR2 success than.

>>725488251
I have a hard time considering this a roguelike, even with the modern loose definition. Sure, there's RNG but that's inherit to any card game.

>>725488064
the aesthetic and atmosphere plays a big part towards balatro's enjoyability thoughever

>>725487779
There's nothing trying too hard about learning what has worked before and copying the steps to success.
It's only bad when you refuse to experiment or lose your own vision and just mime the steps to success, or in other words, when you stop trying to make art and instead fear failure.

>>725488730
Permadeath, seeds and the entire game is basically treating poker like an rpg, complete with levelling, gear (jokers) and consumables.

Plus I didn't even use the term roguelike.

>>725488743
This. It's funny when people bring up Slay the Spire because that's a game that actually managed to put me off with how bland its style is.

>>725488645
The short little beep boop robot was funny and contrasted well with the poncey tall one.

ludo is at least as important as kino

>>725486206 (OP)
Being able to rape the game with wacky combos and big numbers are one of the most important features. Joker cards are also the main focus anyway.

>>725486818
Had the same issue with my circle, despite us playing all kinds of card games in the past. Well, I enjoyed it and got more than half the challenges done before I moved onto another game. I will revisit though.

>>725486818
>Lost count of the number of times I saw people handwave this game because "it's just gambling"
It employs all of the exact same psychological tricks as gambling. I think you'd actually find it does a lot more, and worse than actual gambling, if you went ahead and did a deeper analysis of the game. I also know for a fact that because players who "enjoy" Balatro and other roguelites that prominently feature harmful psychological manipulation while "NOT BEING GAMBLING™" incur larger and more harmful amounts of the very same psychic damage as actual gamblers do, and over longer, less broken, more sustained periods of time. This is because people look at the "NOT GAMBLING™" lightly and feel that because they aren't making real bets, that it can't possibly be as harmful to them as real gambling, and proceed to do it with utter abandon, at all hours of the day.
You might not like to hear this because you think you are "smarter" than the cattle, but this is all false, because the manipulative tactics of Balatro and similar games is quite literally designed to exploit flaws in ALL minds, both of those of lesser intellect and those greater.
But, enjoy your false sense of security while it lasts. Balatro and all other roguelikes/roguelites are what vaping is to smoking - a perceived less harmful version of something that is demonstrably poisonous. I guarantee that if any government were to conduct a study on the effects of these games on the human mind, they would be banned or restricted extremely quickly.

>>725486818
I'm a boomer and tried it and found it boring as fuck. I only like movie games.

>>725487779
lol lmao, he said he watched Northernlion play Luck be a Landlord and so he made a game that is just that, a game for streamers to play.

>>725489126
Same, I didn't give it a shot for years because it looked low effort.

>>725490832
it's entertaining watching this anti-roguelite schizo evolve over time

>>725490832
Don't worry anon, someday you'll get your government-assigned girlfriend to protect your psyche from risk and failure.

>>725490832
Jesus christ, dunning kruger effect and schizophrenia.
Fuck off retard.

Still better than Balls x Shit

Give me some mods, already played pokermon, cryptid and hot potato.

>>725491406
>>725491527
>>725491546
All right. Keep on "smoking" the cocks of the developers of these games that are explicitly mental poison, and keep pretending that they don't harm you in any way, shape, or form. And keep believing that because "high IQ individuals" do it and say it's OK to do, that it's completely good for you and absolutely not harmful in any way, shape, or form.

>>725486206 (OP)
sometimes original ideas win and that's nice

>>725491560
I dropped that within 10 minutes of the demo I don't understand why it got so popular. Someone should make a pinball roguelike instead

>>725486206 (OP)
That chinese and indians are the top gaming demographic by a large margin now. The last few FOTM games have all been casino simulators lol

>>725486206 (OP)
people will eat up anything with enough positive press

I can't wait to see the 15736th time Persona 5 do a collab

>>725486206 (OP)
>vampire survivors
>balatro
>megabonk

Number go up is the ultimate form of gaming

>>725492418
It's not roguelike but there's a pinball metroidvania called Yoku's Island Express. Maybe you'd enjoy that.

>>725486206 (OP)
>not a single character
>no women or no lgbt characters (depending on how you view shoot the moon)
it's this simple.

>>725486206 (OP)
>What can we learn from balatro success?

That AAA is shitting their pants. The amount of indie games blowing the fuck out of AAA these past 2 years is crazy.

>>725486206 (OP)
That it's the one IP can that actively make Vampire Survivors worse by being shoehorned into it.

>>725494281
dude, they had a literal amongus dlc
you can't get worse than that

>>725494378
Spoken like a homo that didn't play it and just saw Amoogus and frowned.
Paranormal Scan is game breaking.

>>725490832
What the fuck are you saying?
Do you know of a gambling game at casinos where advantage play grants you the ability to gain a 99% win rate?

>>725494706
>games allowing you to win means they ABSOLUTELY CANNOT POSSIBLY BE employing harmful psychological manipulation tactics that are also employed by casino games because... b-because, uh... because I JUST AY THEY CAN'T, OK!? JEEZ!!!
Thank you for proving that you aren't here to have a legitimate argument, at least. Count yourself lucky to be among the low-IQ category of Balatro enjoyers as well - at least you have a legitimate excuse.

>>725494516
>that didn't play it
yeah, I'm not wasting my money on that garbage
you're the one complaining about things being shoehorned, and I just provided a worse example

>>725495209
please explain specifically some of these so called "harmful psychological manipulation tactics" that are present in Balatro

poker good

regulatory/censorship agencies are staffed by retards who see cards and think gambling

lootboxes bad

I learned that you are gay and your dad sucks balls, and your mom gets fucked by niggers every night

>>725496120
>in a thread about video games
>assumed to be in good company that someone shitting on a bad addition is actually someone that doesn't play video games
is it really that hard to close youtube and open piratebay

>>725486206 (OP)
If you hook the player for more than 2 hours you get the money

>>725495209
How about answering the anon's question instead of evading it?

>>725496262
it's just cope for being too autistic to understand why someone could like games like this

>>725488450
Crazy how it was made by some guy on Fiverr for 5 bucks

>>725497494
I have the base game, moonspell, and foscari. I stopped playing when they released the amongus dlc
what the fuck are you babbling on about?

>>725497876
The game is literally just a collection of every single thing people despise about
>gacha
>lootboxes
>actual casinos
But reframed in a "safe-horny" way that tricks people into liking it, because it is precisely the right number of shades of "not-gacha" "not-lootbox" "not-casino" that people drop their guard.
The game is wholly random, yet makes you feel like you have just enough control over the randomness ("player agency") that it can be mistaken as "skill". The game gives you the lure of flashing lights and bing bing wahoo for executing big combos with big numbers attached, but there is no way to "skill" these combos into existence - you are at the mercy of the randomness of the shop. The game "feels" solvable and skill-based only in hindsight and with large enough data sets to find the outliers who can "win on (extremely luck based stake) with (arbitrary consistency measure)" in the same way that it's easy to point at someone on the casino floor and try to explain why HE won and not some other shmuck.
And no, before you ask, the frog has nothing whatsoever to do with my post or this discussion.

>>725499182
How about answering the anon's question instead of evading it?
>Do you know of a gambling game at casinos where advantage play grants you the ability to gain a 99% win rate?

>>725499238
I refuse to engage with the question because it isn't relevant to the discussion. You are conflating "gameplay style" with "psychologically harmful tactics designed to stoke the flames of player engagement".
Believe me, if a casino could implement a game that allowed a 99% win rate while making the player feel skilled and in control of the outcome while still coming out on top, they WOULD do it. They already get as close to doing this as the regulatory boards will permit them to.
Pic unrelated.

>>725499182
>The game is wholly random
>you have ... control over the randomness
You have immediately contradicted yourself. It's difficult to take any argument you say serious when that's how you start.
Gacha, lootboxes, and some casino games like roulette or slot machines are wholly random and nothing you do effects the outcome. Some casino games like poker and blackjack do have a skill component to them, and player skill effects the outcome. (Note that even if there is a solved and known mathematical best action in any situation, knowing that action for a given situation counts as skill). Lumping them all together makes it look like you have no idea what you're talking about.

>>725500412
Thank you for conveniently choosing not to read the part where I wrote
>"makes you feel like you have"

>>725500580
if you have any control over it, it is not wholly random. This is a fact.

>>725501313
You don't have any control over it. You FEEL like you do, but you don't. You have the illusion of your choices mattering.
The only thing you can actually, actively elect to do in Balatro is lose. But there is no choice to simply play better and "win" since you can make all the choices that appear to be correct and lose because luck was not on your side.
Most people realize that the game is bullshit around gold stake because higher difficulty modes clarify that the game is luck-based.

tl;dr - this is what Balatro really is at the end of the day. A "skill" game has a deliberate choice available to the player to win the game by playing well enough. Balatro has no such choice.

>>725501536
>The only thing you can actually, actively elect to do in Balatro is lose.
Now think about this fact more critically. What does it mean to choose to lose? The obvious answer is to do something very stupid like play a single high card 4 times and lose on the first small blind. But looking at various choices in the shop and choosing the wrong thing is also choosing to lose, even if you were not 100% sure that choice would result in a loss. Again, this is similar to poker and blackjack where there is a combination of skill and randomness. The randomness in Balatro is simply more difficult to calculate making the optimal move significantly more difficult to solve for. Knowing the correct time to take something like Obelisk requires a lot of familiarity with the game, and this familiarity and knowledge is a form of skill.
>>725501838
>A "skill" game has a deliberate choice available to the player to win the game by playing well enough.
A game does not always need to be winnable. If that were the case then it would just be a puzzle to solve. The randomness is a test of your judgement and knowledge, and knowing that there is always a true correct choice that will win you game diminishes this.
If this is what you believe then there's no point in continuing this conversation. I will say again my original argument that grouping together games of pure chance and games that mix both chance and skill is incorrect. In doing so you're fail to make a proper point about how casino games are psychological harmful.

>>725486206 (OP)
if balatro were ugly i wouldn't have bothered gold chipping all the decks but thankfully it's very beautiful