SEEDED RUNS

[chilly jungle]

🧵Sorry in advance

[pulsar hill]

Seeded runs are super cool. Don't know how I feel about them counting towards unlocks cuz of the amount of cheesing you could do

Then again it's a single player game sooo

Let people have their own fun

[vestal abyss]

BDF squad

[bold fox]

yeah using seeded runs to get unlocks defeats the purpose of the unlocks

[stiff hatch]

I agree with them not counting towards progression. Replaying a see to see where you went wrong is great for learning but not for unlocks.

Seeds are great for content creators to share with their communities to see how they do, kind of the same thing as dailys but more specific to a single run.

"oh yea if youre so good chat you try it...heres the seed good luck" lol.

[pulsar hill]

Do it like mobile games do with microtransactions and have it so you can only pay real money to get unlocks /s /s /s

[bold fox]

$10 to get the yellow deck. fair trade 🙃

[fallow oyster]

Seeded runs
Cool, optimization players like it, manipulate rng for insanity
Should not count for metaprogression

Unseeded runs
Cool, adapting to the situation that arises, on the go strategic thinking, generally more fun to figure out and sometimes get excited when the synergies pop off unexpectedly

[vestal abyss]

oh you're doing a seeded run of my joke i see

[stiff hatch]

Maybe if you re-run alot of seeds you play you get a chance to unlock a "save scum" joker. But thats the only thing you can unlock. And its kind of a meh quality joker lol.

[vestal abyss]

make it truly unhinged - "save scum joker has the ability of the first joker you sold on your previous run"

[stiff hatch]

LOL that would be wild.

[fallow oyster]

Unrelated to this, but is there a way to get pinged whenever a daily poll is sent? I like engaging with it

[vestal abyss]

right click daily poll change notification to all message maybe?

[stiff sundial]

I find seeded runs fine to see the absurdity of this game, but its nothing like getting a random run to worl

[chilly jungle]

Regarding metaprogress in seeded runs. I am a game designer - I want to design a fun game. This includes the metaprogression mechanics, I include them in the game because I think they are fun.

So when people could potentially use seeds to skip over a fun intentional mechanic and experience the game in a manner that is faster but (imo) less fun, it also incentivizes that route. If I remove that incentive by disallowing seeded runs from counting for anything, then the median experience for the player is closer to my intended design and (hopefully) as a result more fun

[bold fox]

yeah

[chilly jungle]

What people want and what people find fun are not always the same thing

Googling seeds to unlock Jokers is not a good design choice

And to rebuke those that say 'well what if I just want to not do the metaprogression', isn't an 'unlock all' button a better solution?

[vestal abyss]

Slice and Dice has this and I played that game casually for a while, almost hit the end of my time with it, and then clicked the button and ended up playing for way more than I would have otherwise

[stark storm]

Slice and dice is brutally hard

At least, to unlock all the game modes

[bold fox]

slice and dice's unlock system is very demanding lol

[vestal abyss]

yeah but at least it tells you how to do it

[stark storm]

Ya

True true

[bold fox]

To touch on something said in the main chat, i also like ways that give the player some freedom in how they engage with the game, because other than letting them create their own fun on top of the main game, it can also make them better at the main game. If the game was just the main game loop, you'd probably get pretty good at it, but it'd reinforce inside-the-box thinking because that's all you get exposed to. Seeded runs allow for tons of ways to let the player outside of the box to see possibilities they might not have otherwise, or to increase their flexibility in general.

[stark storm]

I really like how stuff like wheel of fortune and other random effects are seeded so when optimizing you have a ton more control than normal because you can know the outcome of everything and where it'll land

[frank bone]

I wonder if excluding deck draw/probabilities from seed makes it more fun. So only seed the shop?

[bold fox]

that would be interesting for the purposes of testing a strategy's or choice's consistency

[chilly jungle]

For challenge runs I'll be doing something along these lines, partial seeding

I think that is probably the most fun for a challenge

[frank bone]

Yeah that makes sense otherwise we all converge to the discord hivemind's optimal path

[chilly jungle]

Oh that reminds me of another poll I wanted to do, can unseeded Balatro be solved?

[bold fox]

as in 100% winrate?

[frank bone]

Sure i guess some code could calculate optimal decisions

[chilly jungle]

Based on what a human would reasonably know, and 100% correct decision making

IMO the problem space is too complex

[bold fox]

i think if it didn't come down to getting too unlucky in the early stages, it might be possible to solve

there's some pretty powerful things in this game

[spiral cedar]

Based on the preliminary poll results, I don't think much more discussion is needed.

But I will share my thoughts regardless.

1. I don't think option A vs B is worth polling. What would you do if it came down to a 60-40 split, either way? What about an 80-20 split? What poll results would be actionable, if any? If not, why bother asking? Regardless of what type of play individuals enjoy, they seem to agree that having more options is better than not.

2. I think this seeded vs unseeded thing misses certain nuance like, replaying your own seeds is different from sharing seeds with friends. I think allowing for seeded play at all just allows for new and unique gameplay which doesn't exist without it. And this different gameplay attracts a wider audience, for better or worse. Without it, I probably would've reduced my play time by 80-90%.

3. I don't think we should just copy what other industry leaders are doing without careful consideration, but Slay the Spire is an industry leader for a reason. And they've chosen to have their version of seeded play for a reason. Even without knowing their reasons, I would be hesitant to diverge without having some very strong reasons in the opposite direction.

[frank bone]

Just to backpedal and say i did enjoy re-running old seeds that died and tried to save it. And history of games (deck/joker/seed) would be great

[chilly jungle]

remember though with 120 jokers forcing any strategy isn't always feasible

[spiral cedar]

4. I feel question C should be split into multiple questions, so the possible responses are not just all or nothing. I don't think seeded runs should count toward meta progression. "Oh, you're missing [blank] and [blank]? Here's a list of 6 seeds, plug them in and you're all done in about 4 minutes." But then also you have a responsibility not to make progression too tedious. It would suck to have, say, a unique deck locked behind a rare achievement.

5. Next, I don't feel seeded and unseeded runs should count toward the same leaderboard. However, I feel seeded runs still deserve to have some leaderboard. I like the current implementation of having the endgame screen indicate whether the run is seeded/unseeded, but that can theoretically be photoshopped. It would be nice to have a server-side record of high scores.

[bold fox]

forcing a strategy wouldn't be required for a solve

[frank bone]

For sure the jokers are the hardest part to calculate for a bot or human

[spiral cedar]

6. Currently, players are able to start a run, explore the seed on a second device, and then return to the original run with perfect knowledge but still get the "unseeded end screen." I think the seed should only be shown after the end screen.

[frank bone]

I'm sure theres a neural network kind of solution but i personally don't think those feel like a "solve"

[chilly jungle]

Isn't forced strategy kind of what 'solve' means?

[vestal abyss]

is balatro turning complete

caveat, i don't really know what turing complete means

[bold fox]

if the content of the game is powerful enough, only a generalized strategy would be needed

[frank bone]

I know a powerpoint-os computer is turing complete

[chilly jungle]

I do these polls to generate discussion, collect data, and change my opinion in the face of evidence. So I think that even if people disagree with the results or the wording of the questions there is a ton to be gained

[frank bone]

I liked drspectred bullet paragraphs

[chilly jungle]

This happened with the poll about deck previews, I had a biased poll and with a lot of data and discussion realized this was a problem worth looking into and trying to fix

[stark storm]

I forgot but this has been brought up before and it definitely needs to be solved somehow imo

[spiral cedar]

Sure, I guess it's pretty low effort/ low stakes to throw up a poll to generate discussion and just follow it up with a different poll if you're not getting the insight you want.

[chilly jungle]

Is this solved in Isaac? (aside from moving it to the end of the run)

[bold fox]

seed is shown in pause menu at all times

[stark storm]

I wouldn't use Isaac as your benchmark here since Isaac has various ways to cheat meta progression and they don't really care if people do so

The game has an unlock all keybind but also mods don't disable achievements so there are tons of mods that just trivialize different stuff

[chilly jungle]

I don't think I can fully prevent it, but it can be disincentivized reasonably well

[bold fox]

although it's not a perfect solution, isaac also forces the player to still express their skill in order to get to the same point of the original run, whereas balatro you can just copy what you did before exactly

[chilly jungle]

And yeah an unlock all button that could disable achievements on that profile

[stark storm]

I know I personally used mods in Isaac to fill up the greed mode coin machine because the way it's designed is anti-fun and I dont like playing greed mode lol

[frank bone]

I liked the unlock all button on slice & dice

[chilly jungle]

If issues like that arise I'd rather address the problem at the root - something about that part of the metaprogress isn't fun

[wild oasis]

seeded runs shouldn't count towards metaprogression imo
much more fun to naturally roll into your last unlocks

[stark storm]

Yes absolutely, that's part of why I say not to use Isaac as a benchmark, they just allow mods to fix issues instead of the broken mechanic

[frank bone]

Maybe neural networks are the next key to game balancing lol, find out which jokers are overtuned

I will say gothic's youtube quest for the polychrome most used joker felt a bit agonizing, but if you're enjoying the game you wouldn't mind doing 1000 more runs anyway

(from the last beta)

[chilly jungle]

That is getting yeeted

Awful metaprogression unlock

Player has no agency at all over it

[stark storm]

Thank god omg I was not looking forward to that

[frank bone]

Well most unlocks are kind of rng, like vouchers, just that poly is a lower % lmao i'm sure there's a different way to reward long term play like pick up 10 polychromes in different seeds (or unseeded runs)

[chilly jungle]

I think there are much more interesting challenges to tie to unlocks than that particular one, was a bad choice on my part

[frank bone]

Fair play that's what the beta and demo is for

[chilly jungle]

Exactly - quite a few unlocks that bothered me when paying attention to how people actually were playing the game need an update

[frank bone]

Anyway back to seeds, would it be too much to ask for both perfect seeds & partial seeds? although which part should be seeded remains to be defined. I felt very uncool skipping over wheel of fortune cos i knew from the seed

My inner gambler was not satisfied

[spiral cedar]

I like that we have the forum-style thread for sharing seeds.
I like that we have the separate seed chat to more broadly discuss seeded play.

If I have an interesting thing which happens to occur in a seeded run, do I post a screen cap in server chat, game discussion, seed chat, or multiple?
"it just happened to be a seeded run" vs "it was only possible because of a seeded run" vs "I actually want to discuss this seed specifically, not just the phenomenon." vs "I'm interested in whether or not others have/can recreate this, whether organically or seeded"

Sometimes I feel the "look at all this crazy shit (from a seeded run)" in the game discussion channel drowns out/ minimizes other players' more tame/casual interaction with the game. I feel maybe game discussion should be further bifurcated?

And that there could also be a separate chat thread for high scores and challenge runs?

I completed the "minimum best hand" challenge. I don't want to be spamming the chat with the screen shot every 8 hours, but I do want to raise some awareness that it's been done.

[stark storm]

Congrats on beating the min best hand challenge 👀

[fathom hound]

In my opinion, I would say it should count towards no progression at all, except for all of the information showed in the high scores tab

[stark storm]

As far as channels go, in my experience as a discord admin, the more times you split channels the more you reduce overall activity.

Especially for new users, if a new user can't find where to talk about something immediately, they will just leave and never return lol

But also for topics that sit in the line between two split channels, people will be less inclined to discuss stuff like that in fear of being reprimanded for being off topic

So imo keeping channels to a minimum (within reason) is best.

[deep inlet]

I think unlocks should count since its a singleplayer thing and i shouldnt be punished for wanting stuff unlucked in the game when unlocking something rare is so rng based and the pool of jokers and such will only go up.

Its not like it gives me an advantage over other players or something

[proper glade]

I think the unlocks being unlockable through seeded runs only really makes sense if it is difficult to unlock normally for example in the demo I feel as though the average player can get a million value hand at some point if they understand the game and mechanics but a billion value hand is something tough to get and I feel as though using a seed to get that would make sense

[frank bone]

In that case unlock all option might be better than looking up seeds

Achievements and unlocks aren't necessarily tied to each other anyway

[fathom hound]

Maybe you can turn it on and off or something like first time you use seeded ones it will do a little pop up and say do you want this to affect your collection?

[deep inlet]

its like the debate with save scumming in other games. I wont do it bc it feels unnatural but if I lose something that was making me enjoy my game a lot more and im not enjoying playing anymore i will do it

If unlocks are something like end a game with 2 ultra rare legendary jokers that have a chance of 1 in a million to spawn or something rng based ridiculous like that i think i should be able to skip it with a seed

Wait what about

Seeded runs let you unlock stuff to play with but you get an icon in the collection that shows you unlocked that thing with a seeded run

thats a good idea in my eyes. no one gets content starved and people who want to show off can do it

[frank bone]

Considering that the polychrome achievement is being yeeted (see above) i dont think the unlocks will be designed like that anymore, so we shouldnt be worried about that

[silent oriole]

I think if seeded runs can unlock meta progressions, then seeds are basically cheat codes, which isn't fun.

[deep inlet]

Oh thank god

[chilly jungle]

I think a good solution here for some of the seed usage is to give an unlock all button that unlocks all content for that profile but prevents all achievements for that profile. I don't think I heard much dissent about that.

Because basically if you hate metaprogression you have a way to skip past it all without needing to resort to doing homework in the seed forum

[stark storm]

Yeah I like that solution, also let's me play on seeds that require full unlocks without having gotten there myself yet

[vestal abyss]

this is perfect given you support multiple profiles

[chilly jungle]

Also to be clear - I am not getting rid of seeds. Just because these results seem to indicate that on average people associate Balatro with unseeded runs doesn't mean that seeds need to go. Seeds are a feature that only add to the depth

I wanted to poll partially because I was so surprised at how much attention that part of the game was getting when it was really just an afterthought during development

[stark storm]

It's also a feature that particularly lends itself to community since it allows for shared experiences

[sand cloud]

The thing is that you seeds is an easy way to "squeeze" content out of a game, from a player perspective

I feel like high scores should have a different seeded and non-seeded high score, and, hot take seeds should count for unlocks

When you load an OP seed to beat the game you know very well what you are doing. At that point it's no longer cheating and is essentially cheat codes

Are you unable to beat under X restriction, really wanna play deck Y and don't really care about doing it "legit"? Having seeds essentially means they have a cheat code to access the content

[chilly jungle]

What about the unlock all button suggestion?

#1158782741911978074 message

[sand cloud]

I can see that, yeah!

Inb4 we get a cheat codes screen that lets us unlock all, unlock all decks or customize however we want, without the cheat code homework

I am of the opinion that people who wanna play legit will play legit, even if you have the most robust cheatcode and seed options that won't stop most people from doing stuff legit

[chilly jungle]

I ask because I want the best design to fit the needs of players,. Is the unlock all idea lacking something for you compared to having seeded unlocks?

[sand cloud]

Biggest thing I can see is someone who wanna unlock all decks but not all difficulty modifiers

[vestal abyss]

dead cells lets you toggle between anything you've already unlocked that's a fun system too

[chilly jungle]

What if there was a different button that 'unlocks all Stakes'

[sand cloud]

I feel we could have 3 different buttons, one unlock all, one unlock all stakes and one unlock all decks. Shouldn't be too hard to implement

[vestal abyss]

what about jokers then

talkin like buttons are free

[chilly jungle]

What percentage of people would want to unlock something with a button but also want it to be more granular than 'Unlock everything'

My guess is very low, but that could be a daily poll

[bold fox]

perhaps people who saw something cool in a video/stream they wanted to try but don't want to overwhelm themselves maybe 🤔

[vestal abyss]

i like it as an all or nothing proposition and also unlocking piecemeal might break seeded runs?

if you want it you got it but you get it all

[chilly jungle]

Plus with multiple profiles it's less of an issue

[sand cloud]

I feel you could make a cheat code screen and atomize it that way. JOKER1 unlocks joker with internal ID 1, JOKER2 unlocks joker with internal ID 2, etc, alongside a JOKERALL cheat code. That way you can unlock whatever you want however you want and with very little effort from the dev's part

I don't think there's a point where "too many options for unlocking stuff via cheating" is ever a bad thing, only constraint being dev time/effort

[vestal abyss]

honest question what or who are you solving for? someone sees one cool joker on stream and is like "oh i want that exact joker!" but doesn't want to unlock all and do a seeded run?

[bold fox]

cheat codes would have to be found externally

[vestal abyss]

yeah requiring someone to go outside the game to do something in the game is probably Bad Game Design

[sand cloud]

I disagree tbfh

[vestal abyss]

unless..... balatro ARG when

[bold fox]

not always but it doesn't really fit this game I don't think

[vestal abyss]

wait is this the ARG already

i love bees

[sand cloud]

For something like cheat codes and in this age of wikis, you can just google cheat codes and it's not a problem

[chilly jungle]

I'd wager that this flow covers 95% of cases

• I want to skip some part of the metaprogression
• make new profile
• unlock all

[bold fox]

1/20 is still a lot with how popular this game is

[chilly jungle]

Externalizing game functionality to a wiki is not good game design, so if I can get around it through design I want to

[sand cloud]

• make a challange run where I unlock only these specific jokers for some reason

[sand cloud]

You can make an unlockable in-game cheat list if you want

[vestal abyss]

yes but focusing development resources on a 5% use case to the detriment of doing something else is prioritizing 5% of the audience over 95%

[chilly jungle]

This is all Pareto principal

I'm 1 person

[bold fox]

I don't think it's as bad as that

also that might still be correct anyway

[chilly jungle]

80% use case takes 20% of the effort, the remaining 20% of use case takes 80% effort

[bold fox]

the UI discussions cater to the most confused people

for lack of better wording

[vestal abyss]

so much digital ink spilled over "select two jokers and copy the rightmost one"

[bold fox]

I think the most likely granular situation would be wanting to unlock all decks

[chilly jungle]

Right now I have 0% of the use case covered, so why not add the unlock all and cover 95%?

The death card is getting a reword

[vestal abyss]

it's free real estate

[chilly jungle]

I hate it so much, it's so confusing

[sand cloud]

I don't think a cheat code screen that changes unlock variables will be very hard or take long. But it comes down to thunk's priorities, on expected/normal gameplay vs do-what-you-what gameplay

[chilly jungle]

Implementing is one thing, thorough testing, controller support, localization adds a lot

[sand cloud]

Fair, yeah

[vestal abyss]

it's never as easy as you think, and it always has concomitant cruft you have to graft onto it yeah

[chilly jungle]

Cruft is putting my codebase in a pretty good light

[vestal abyss]

if i described my code as cruft that would be generous to my C average undergrad CS degree

[stark storm]

The death tarot card is so funny to me, it's functionality is simple but people seem to just tap out halfway through reading it LMAO

The moment they read "rightmost" they check out

[chilly jungle]

It is overly complex because it used to be 3

[vestal abyss]

something about it definitely breaks brains

"select two cards, the right card becomes the left card"

[chilly jungle]

So I can make it say
Select 2 cards,
Convert the left card
into the right card
[drag to rearrange]

[vestal abyss]

yeah when it was 3 the verbal problem in 2 lines was way more difficult

i also think that converting the left to the right cuts against (english) natural reading order

you expect the action to flow from left to right

pegging it to the right card requires you to "read" the action backwards

[bold fox]

yeah it's also more intuitive to want to convert it into a higher rank card, which is usually on the left

[chilly jungle]

This was done partially to nudge the player to rearrange cards more

[vestal abyss]

it's often far more likely i want to copy the card on the left yeah so i almost ALWAYS have to rearrange to use

[vestal abyss]

ah

[chilly jungle]

But that was very much a failed idea

[vestal abyss]

yeah but you got GLUK to misplay like 8 times on video so kind of a win regardless

[chilly jungle]

So adding it to the card should help with that too

[frank bone]

If that is the intention then a little pop up to remind players about profiles so their achievements dont get disabled on their main would be nice

Or an undo option? I think thats a thing for slice & dice

[vapid spindle]

Would color coding the selected cards help in making sure you don’t accidentally convert the wrong card?

[vast lodge]

can i pick more than one answer ?

what kind of metaprogresion are we talking about ?

only the unlocks?

just for the collection

or for more metaprogresion to come/in the future ?

why is the pool worded as, what do you like/agree with in balatro DEMO?, like some things are good to be in demo but in full game some stuff/statements change

only metaprogresion i can think about are decks right now in the demo, than i only see a collectibles/unlocks to just feel good about when you have them all

[cerulean ruin]

idk if it was just a me problem, but I definitely read it as turning 2 selected cards into the right most card in hand when i started. Your new wording would remove that misinterpretation.

[slender relic]

imo a good way to re-word the death card could be:

"Destroy one card in hand, then duplicate one card in hand"

It's functionally identical to transforming one card into another, and doesn't require the cards to be in a specific order.

altough it may be hard to implement, using one tarot card for two distinct changes

[chilly jungle]

'Destroy' is also a keyword that has synergies with things in the full game

[slender relic]

oh dear that is quite the issue i do not want to have a TCG type stack in my dopamine roguelike

[slender relic]

tbh i think this is a pretty good way to word it.
Specifying that you can drag cards would definitely encourage newer players to think about the tarot's effects more

[chilly jungle]

This was lost in the noise in the server chat but I added that to the game, I think it looks better than before. If people are still confused I'll re-evaluate
#🎙・server-chat message

[rich valve]

I think seeded and unseeded are both good in a different way

Unseeded is more fun and casual, while seedeed is for more competitive and optimization runs