#Daily Scores

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chilly spire
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šŸ§µ

unique urchin
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probably d or e

ivory pilot
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I feel like there should be two rankings-one for highest hand score and one for time

forest crypt
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Combination of A and C though the more the merrier

crisp lagoon
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I feel like D allows all sorts of playstyles to have a chance to score well on the leaderboard since it can score all different metrics

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Though I can also imagine being able to sort for different metrics for people who might perhaps think it's fun to grind for one particular metric? So perhaps one primary scoreboard and then the ability to sort scores by other factors too if you care about those things. Just an idea

ivory pilot
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I like the idea of a formula that takes in multiple factors when determining score, but feel like it could easily be cheesed

chilly spire
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Isaac had that issue in their dailies

vestal mural
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I like the way Opus Magnum does it best- different histograms for different metrics, so you can play how you like and give yourself some variety across runs

IMG_0556.jpg
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(random image from google search)

chilly spire
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What metrics for Balatro?

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hands played, highest scoring hand, money

crisp lagoon
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  • ante
ivory pilot
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I love those sorts of graphs, showing you how much worse better you are than everybody else

chilly spire
vestal mural
chilly spire
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It's easier for dealing with cheating

ivory pilot
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YOOO LESS GOOO

versed shale
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Slay the Spire has a single score based off several criteria throughout your run, and although there's no real cheese to be had in StS, the best players always maximize as many of those criteria as possible, meaning that it doesn't actually reward players of different playstyles similarly, just the ones who know how to farm the specifics that actually matter

chilly spire
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Any 1 scoring system will do the same too

vestal mural
chilly spire
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Highest scoring hand seems to be the most obvious one because it's the one people usually refer to when competing in the demo, other one being total time taken to win the game

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But I wanted to poll because there are so many directions I can go

forest crypt
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so whats the problem with all of them besides getting it up is a pain in the pillion

versed shale
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i think having multiple leaderboards for different aspects of the run is cool

chilly spire
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Minimum viable product - there is one of me. So I'd rather get 1 working then expand

forest crypt
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fair enough

grave summit
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Definitely highest scoring hand would be a priority then imo; saying this as someone who speedruns the game

vestal mural
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Highest scoring hand and lowest time to win are top two imo

crisp lagoon
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I don't understand how counting time would work? Does it account for game speed? Does shop time count? Picking tarot cards? I don't feel like time is an intuitive metric to compete in outside speedruns, but maybe that's just me.

I can see both total chip count of all hands and highest chip hands being worth tracking since some playstyles will dump all discards into one massive hand and some might prefer to spread them out over many hands to use many cards, for example.

versed shale
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in terms of pure competition, i'd say minimum rounds or hands played would be the most skill-based

chilly spire
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It's the closest to my 'intended' playstyle for Balatro

versed shale
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largest scoring hand can reach a point where it's not actually relevant to winning the game, just about how many OP synergies you can find

crisp lagoon
chilly spire
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And if you lose because you were skipping too much - that's part of the gambit

vestal mural
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If you manage to get multiple stats (fingers crossed!) it could be fun to have an ā€œaverageā€ histogram too lol

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To try and balance all of them at once

chilly spire
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Something like
(Ante_Reached^2)/(hands_played + 3*rounds_played)

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Unintuitive compared to highest scoring hand, but this incentivizes strong play throughout the whole run

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And it's risky if you just lose early

crisp lagoon
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I like an equation like that, it seems to count stats which are pretty undisputably important for good games

chilly spire
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Dunno if that equation checks out at the lower bound but you get the gist

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Basically higher ante = better, fewer hands and rounds = better

versed shale
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yeah

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and rounds counting multiple times means you want to skip more for higher score

chilly spire
versed shale
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maybe you could use the score requirement of the last-beaten blind instead of ante^2? seeing as it already scales up in a similar way

chilly spire
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For sure

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This is kind of that StS issue though, in a way

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Just that it's incentivizing a more normal playstyle

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Because playing a long game with many rounds/hands with like 8 ball or ride the bus might be more fun but is bad with that metric

crisp lagoon
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Ante feels like a pretty good measure of how strong a setup you got going for the long run so it's a good measure of strong play, I think. On the other hand, the pleasure I derive from those extreme high chip hands or rounds is a big part of what keeps me coming back, hence why the demo is so replayable even with a low ante. So I think counting chips in some form would be fun to compete on

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Then in a dream world you could load a replay someone's super high scoring hand from the leaderboard or at least see a breakdown of it so you can understand why it was insane and interesting

vestal mural
chilly spire
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If I had to pick 3 for 3 histograms, I'd probably go with highest single hand, fastest time (regardless of animation speed, for the speedrunners), and that 'Balascore' metric of high ante with low hands/round

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Seems like a wide swath

vestal mural
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Those seem like really good ones

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ā€œBalascoreā€ is a fun term lol

crisp lagoon
versed shale
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how do you verify lowest time like you'd verify the other categories?

chilly spire
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Money might be really fun too but I feel like that is 4th

chilly spire
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That is the benefit of histograms

vestal mural
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Histograms my beloved

chilly spire
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People can cheat if they want but they won't really throw things off much

versed shale
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alright, i think i get it

vestal mural
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Will we get to see a regular leaderboard of just steam friends? Competing with friends is fun

grave summit
versed chasm
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I like "best hand" and "most money" for all time high score categories. For Daily Runs, I like "minimum rounds" and "minimum time" best.

I like the tension between losing resources but gaining score by skipping rounds.
And I like the tension between playing fast vs playing strategically. Like speed chess variants.

versed shale
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what about if players here on the discord get high scores and want to compare with each other? would the histogram differentiate enough that they wouldn't both have, say, 97.1% as their scores and can't tell who did better?

crisp lagoon
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A histogram is a great visualization, but which percentage you place in is also really good for stoking the competitive side. If needed, you can round it to nearest 5 or 10 and for the top 10% it can be individual percentage points, maybe

chilly spire
chilly spire
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I can also make it show the actual metric on screen for the histogram

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So you can just use that to compare

versed chasm
# chilly spire Why not best hand for daily?

I feel it encourages less strategic diversity and features less interesting decision points. To win blinds, you need points, so you are already incentivized to build toward higher scoring hands by default. There is some tension in building up your economy so you can afford more upgrades later, but that tension is limited.

chilly spire
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The time played one is interesting to me as well...

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It kind of goes against a core principal of the game

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Whereby the game never incentivizes any mechanical skill

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Or quick thinking

grave summit
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Time played is the kind of thing that most players wouldnā€™t go for, but a small subset would

vestal mural
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I really like fastest time for dailies

versed chasm
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I think it's cool to give people different axes on which to compete, but if you only had the time to implement one metric, Best Hand would not be my pick.

chilly spire
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If I added that as a time score and people saw it, there is a subset that probably would feel like they need to go quickly because they are being judged on that time

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Even though they dislike it

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So I need to be cognizant of that

vestal mural
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I feel like having multiple graphs would help with that, since it would be less prominent

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Thatā€™s something I saw on Opue Magnum a lot, one or two of the categories would get ignored by the majority in favour of one they liked to optimise more

chilly spire
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I'd really love to do the 3

versed chasm
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I think the strategy in optimizing for Money Earned is similar to optimizing for Minimum Rounds, but I feel the average player will have a harder time seeing what makes that interesting. As evidenced by the majority of players so far voting for Best Hand as the metric.

chilly spire
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So it's already strongly reinforced within the core game loop

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Visually, at least

versed chasm
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For sure

chilly spire
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Which is a good thing

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Because sometimes games don't have an obvious score to use

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like StS

versed shale
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maybe there's another way to do a high-scoring metric that isn't influenced by best hand

chilly spire
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Or Isaac

versed chasm
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yeah, and I think it's worthwhile to score players based on what they expect

vestal mural
chilly spire
versed shale
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i know that's a poll option, but single best hand can also win that

chilly spire
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Basically anything that uses an equation of existing metrics will be harder to understand and lose that benefit

versed shale
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yeah, if it was used, it'd have to be simpliied

chilly spire
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I think I need multiple histograms

versed shale
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my thought is along the lines of the median of all (hand score/blind score req)

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can't think of a way to simplify

chilly spire
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The fun part of this game is how you can do a bunch of different things with it depending on what it throws at you so choosing 1 feels like it's against that

chilly spire
versed shale
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i think any hand-score-related criteria would

versed chasm
versed shale
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total rounds might need to be raised to a power, but that sounds like it has some potential

vestal mural
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Seems like a pretty good idea to me too

chilly spire
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Left histogram = Highest scoring hand (bread and butter)
Middle histogram = Some made up metric like we are discussing (incentivizing a 'fun' style of play)
Right histogram = Time

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That metric can be workshopped but I think some combination of score/hands/rounds and Ante where risky play is incentivized would be good

vestal mural
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If you wanna get silly and make it 5 histograms you could add in money and something else a bit more esoteric

chilly spire
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3 satisfies my brain

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I feel like more would be rough for casual players

vestal mural
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For 3 those metrics definitely sound good

chilly spire
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Even having histograms at all is hard for casual players probably

vestal mural
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I love having as many stats as I can but Iā€™m probably the minority there

versed chasm
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3 feels extra satisfying to me, too

forest crypt
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maybe you could add a setting for more daily stats?

versed shale
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another idea in the hand-score realm is using something like the fire height equation

chilly spire
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Hol up, would time attack even be fun?

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If you have 1 shot

vestal mural
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I would enjoy it

chilly spire
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That isn't really how WR hunting works at all, lots of resetting

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It would be very very different

versed shale
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it's gated by the fact that you can lose

vestal mural
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Itā€™s certainly not regular balatro

chilly spire
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And you kind of need to win to do well in the histogram

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What I am saying is: Has anyone even tried playing like that?

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Like if I said you 100% have to win your next run, now do it as fast as possible

versed shale
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i guess unseeded speedrunners have lol

chilly spire
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No they still reset

versed shale
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well, not quite

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yeah, next run specifically, won't happen

vestal mural
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You do get a chance every day though

chilly spire
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But would that make people play differently though? It would feel very different than hunting unseeded

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Plus what if there is a challenge for the daily?

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Interacting with the challenge plus a time attack would maybe be less fun

versed shale
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i was wondering if there would be a subset of daily runners who would attempt fullskip every day until they hit

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for the min rounds score

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sounds similar

chilly spire
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lmao only way to get this 'correct' is to sort the run by Ante reached, have a 1000 way tie for first

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That would incentivize the exact same playstyle as the base game

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I'm less convinced about the time metric now

grave summit
forest crypt
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hmmmm

chilly spire
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Math you are a runner - what do you think of the last few messages

grave summit
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Currently the biggest strategy shift in the last week or two is literally me realizing that high card might be faster than pair on an amazing seed

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1 attempt would be very different

chilly spire
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In your opinion - still fun or too different to tell?

grave summit
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I think it would still definitely be fun

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It has much more risk/reward than speedrunning

chilly spire
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I feel like it would be anxiety mode

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Like Uncut Gems if it was a Balatro run

grave summit
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I think it depends on peopleā€™s playstyle

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Do they want to go for a really strong time but lose 95% of the time or play it safer but win 95% of the time

versed chasm
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Even players not optimizing primarily for speed will still hold it over other players if they score similarly in other metrics but did it with generally faster decisions

chilly spire
forest crypt
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analogies...

subtle parcel
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I think if it was sufficiently difficult, which hopefully these challenges would be, some sort of metric of "score" like the last option, will always create a better competitive environment imo rather than make the biggest hand

versed chasm
grave summit
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I think itā€™s good that itā€™s in the middle, because I feel for casual players highest hand has a balance of strategy and intuitiveness

versed shale
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what if "lowest sum score"

subtle parcel
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Maybe it could have multiple leaderboards for the casual and not casual, but if I was very good at Balatro I would want the challenge to be about beating it not getting a massive hand that you don't need

chilly spire
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I think highest hand does line up pretty well with the main Balatro playstyle anyway - like usually you are really trying to get the highest scoring hand possible

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Aside from glass shenanigans, in which case it's harder to survive long enough for it to pay out so that could balance itself

chilly spire
grave summit
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I think the risk/reward that a single run yields makes everything a lot more balanced

forest crypt
chilly spire
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Yeah like if dusk shows up at Ante 5 and it's based on highest scoring hand - are you taking it?

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Because you lower your chances of even winning

grave summit
chilly spire
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That is not planned

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I don't want to set that expectation

grave summit
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I donā€™t expect it to be implemented

chilly spire
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That involves an absurd amount of work and a way to simulate each submitted run - which might be on the horizon but isn't on the to do list

grave summit
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Quality > Quantity

chilly spire
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It's a wishlist item for me

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Would be really fun though. I'll keep that in mind

vestal mural
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Even worse than asking for a straight flush

subtle parcel
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I would just be worried at least for me that someone would post a youtube video or something getting the highest score and the challenge would be stale at least if you wanted to be at the top of the leaderboard, not sure how you would solve that but like seeing the solution to wordle it ruins it

manic orchid
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One thing id like to add is that if you show multiple metrics, each daily player will basically end up choosing one metric to optimize. So every new daily metric essentially adds a whole new competition category

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Which is generally a good thing imo since you are basically providing multiple versions of the daily for each person to choose their own highest valued metric

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At that point it doesnt matter if best hand is a "bad" metric, if people like it they will optimize it and otherwise they will optimize Balascore or speed

chilly spire
chilly spire
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Because optimizing for money earned might be less fun than optimizing for highes hand

manic orchid
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Yep ofc, I liked the idea of highest ante and lowest hands/rounds just because its very risk rewardy and that feels right to me

chilly spire
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You're an Isaac buff - any advice based on what they did?

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I remember it being a whole thing

manic orchid
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Yeah it is a whole thing still to this day LMAO

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The combined score metric is extremely opaque and esoteric and it just leads to a totally different playstyle that takes wiki research to even understand why the score is moving the way it does

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Iirc it incentivized having fewer items? Which is stupid because it punishes engaging in the core loop of the game

subtle parcel
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I'm not sure your structure for the challenges, but if the goal is to go unlimited antes I feel like by far the best would be highest ante reached, but if it is limited I agree that highest score could be a neat way to see it

chilly spire
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making it opaque to have people not focus on the score and just play

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But there are big issues with that

manic orchid
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Here's the table of contents explaining whats going on on the wiki lol

image.png
chilly spire
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lmao

vestal mural
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Yikes

manic orchid
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That list doesnt even include the fact that different characters just straight up start with slightly different scores

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(it doesnt start at 0 because there is a time penalty)

chilly spire
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I'm lucky Balatro has a score already

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I mean look at all the YouTube videos that come out for it - they usually have some big number in the thumbnail

manic orchid
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In general isaac players split themselves between optimizing for Score and optimizing for Speed, since those are the two metrics you are shown at the end (ignore that score is also partially dependent on speed, dont ask me) but I think thats about all that isaac dailies got right

vestal mural
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With all the flames :)

manic orchid
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Oh also some isaac dailies are special runs that have a whole slew of modifications but you can never go back and play old ones šŸ‘

chilly spire
manic orchid
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Nuclear throne dailies/weeklies heavily encourage going as long as you possibly can and it makes them extremely competitive and very engaging for high level players

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Sure they take a long time but every extra minute gets more and more tense since nuclear throne loops have the same rising tide feeling as balatro chip requirement increases

chilly spire
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That would make balancing the game much more tricky at the top end

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Since you can kind of go infinite

manic orchid
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Yeah

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Im not saying its necessarily the right thing for balatro, just that it works really well in nuclear throne

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so well that its basically what most of the community is centered around now, aside from casual play

chilly spire
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I can consider it, I see how it would be fun if the tide rises quickly enough

subtle parcel
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I see the point of poll, very difficult to think about I would just be concerned that "highest hand score" would take away from the challenge being interesting to chase

manic orchid
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Its a bit different because nuclear throne is more raw expression of skill

vestal mural
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Harder scaling after you ā€œwinā€ could be fun

chilly spire
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One thing I want to toy with is changing the equation for Ante to not just increase exponentially, but that exponential increases as well

vestal mural
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Start scaling the scaling a bit after that too lol

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Yeah

chilly spire
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It is currently exponential

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^1.75 for base scaling

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Not giving away anything else

manic orchid
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Kind of a side thing but this is an interesting thing that happened recently with Nuclear Throne dailies, two players almost simultaneously were the first people to have verified runs that died in all 100 unique ways https://www.reddit.com/r/NuclearThrone/s/OwVodClJ1f

chilly spire
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But during the beta for NG+ there was ^2 and ^2.25 scaling per ante

chilly spire
manic orchid
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Across their entire history of dailies yep

chilly spire
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That's sick

manic orchid
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The reason it was near simultaneous was because one of the unique deaths had to be from a specific enemy variant that only spawned on halloween day

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and it was the last unique death they both needed

manic orchid
subtle parcel
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Yeah at some point there should be insane scaling, similar to the difficulty of whatever the last open test was, definitely not that hard at base, but at high difficulties it should be hard to win I've found this demo very fun, but too easy at times

manic orchid
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tbh in the demo runs barely have time to even get started

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which, considering the popularity of this demo, is very exciting for the full game lol

chilly spire
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I actually think that is one of the fun parts

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Forming the run

manic orchid
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yeah its great

vestal mural
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i like it a lot too

chilly spire
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Which is part of the success of the demo, maybe moreso than seeing the full payoff

subtle parcel
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Yeah it's just enough to keep you wanting more I don't disagree this demo has been essentially perfect to me as a demo

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Such a good game concept glad someone with game dev skills thought of it

versed chasm
chilly spire
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up to - say - Ante 25. I wouldn't want runs to be able to make it past there very often

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That's already like a couple hours

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maybe even ante 20

vestal mural
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hell yes, math

manic orchid
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Sneaky developer implementing soft caps? In my endless mode? its more likely than you think

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(im also in favor though)

vestal mural
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soft capped endless is a great idea imo

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very in favour

chilly spire
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it's still procedural

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More that the rising tide accelerates at a higher order than you possibly could after a certain point

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And it's my job to make that 'certain point' reasonable

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That always annoyed me about LBaL

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at least when I first watched it

subtle parcel
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After ante 10 (or whatever the new end will be) I think the complexion of the game should change not just scores increasing signficiantly but also final boss bosses each time and maybe if it isn't too hard maybe some harder bosses

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But also some of the bosses could feel oppressive later in so it's just an idea

chilly spire
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Ok so

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Basically if the formula is:
Ante amount = Final Ante amount * X ^ (Ante - 8)
Where Final Ante Amount is the Ante amount for ante 8 (80,000 for base difficulty, for example)

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Spoilers I am planning on 8 Antes for the core game

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Anyway, that gives
Ante amount = 80,000 * X ^ (Ante - 8) X = 1.75 + 0.25*(Ante - 8)

grand drum
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what's X here

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constant?

vestal mural
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X is right there

versed chasm
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X scales linearly

grand drum
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I'm blinder than this guy

image.png
chilly spire
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I can adjust that 0.25 depending on where I want a run to end

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Maybe make it 0.3, 0.4, etc

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Right now it's technically 0

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So just 1.75 for every Ante

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And that doesn't keep up with some crazy builds until way later on

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So I guess
Ante amount = 80,000 * X ^ (Ante - 8) X = 1.75 + Y * (Ante - 8) Y = ???

grand drum
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Desmos does not like this

chilly spire
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Let me make a table with different Y values so we can look at what that does to the first 30 Antes

vestal mural
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yayy tables!

chilly spire
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Basically pure nonsense here

image.png
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But I don't think anything E20 will be reasonably doable, but it's impossible to tell until people start playing the full version

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So that Y value will need to get honed in when it's released

vestal mural
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demo is up to E13, so

chilly spire
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Theoretically, full version you really can go infinite

vestal mural
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i set up a desmos graph for the ante scaling past 8

vestal mural
next copper
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For option D, what about Slay the Spire-esque bonus things?

glacial crystal
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+1 for "multiple leaderboards / histograms", but if I had to choose only one I'd choose B or D

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I think another question to ask is: what percentage of players will beat the final blind in a daily challenge on average?

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if the percentage is low, an Ante / Rounds / Hands metric would be good

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(ā€¦would adding Hands into the metric discourage people from taking Burglar?)

chilly spire
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I think all metrics will be first divided by which ante you get to. So if you are the highest scoring ante 7 run, you would still be ranked below the lowest scoring ante 8 run

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That is what Spelunky did iirc, their leaderboard was based on Gold, but grouped first by what level you made it to

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maybe I'm wrong

vestal mural
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swag-ass new pfp local

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looks cool as hell

vestal mural
crystal edge
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So hear me out but for variety what if you rotated the scoring mechanic/goal? Like some days/weeks itā€™s fastest run then some days itā€™s highest chip score and some its some sort of aggregate. That way different styles of players can all have fun and a time to shine.

junior steppe
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why rotate instead of all at the same time?

glacial crystal
crystal edge
loud kayak
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Echoing what others have already said, D is my choice too, and a leaderboard for A and C would be dope šŸ‘

pearl schooner
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i feel like the "run score" would be hard to balance, but if done correctly it sounds very good.

weary torrent
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It is likely a lot of work/balancing but I think an aggregate is a good idea for a leaderboard, as people can already optimize for whatever they want to optimize for and an overall score gives a unique angle of challenge

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I appreciate the system that The Binding of Isaac uses, though it does feel very punishing at times

sleek wing
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I honestly really like the idea of B. maybe not as a consistent thing, but something you could consider is having a run that encourages using the fewest rounds/hands as a metric sometimes for some runs.
having the scoring change from run to run in general sounds like a fun idea to me, actually - maybe two consistent metrics like highest hand and time or whatever and the third "fun" one could vary day by day

copper lotus
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This may have been mentioned higher up, but why not have different dailies have different goals? One days daily might be reach the highest possible ante, the next days might be score the highest single hand score by the end of the main boss ante. One day could be beat Ante X as quickly as possible.
The biggest drawback is some people may not want to play certain daily types, but the strength is it forces players to adapt to different challenges, rather than trying to optimise for the same routine every day.

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Or, you could show rank/percentile for each criteria and let users chase the highest rank on their choice of leader board, with a conglomeration of these for a final score as in D

knotty heart
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I think one of the strongest parts of Balatro as a game is the variety of different ways that players can define "success" so I'm also +1 for multiple leaderboards

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I could see it being really enjoyable to want to push for highest single hand value one run and fastest in-game time the next

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Something of that nature

versed chasm
versed chasm
# copper lotus This may have been mentioned higher up, but why not have different dailies have ...

I like the idea of different challenges each day incentivizing different strategies/playstyles/skills.

I don't think having different scoring/ranking criteria each day is the way to achieve this. You already pointed out what might be problematic about this. For example, having a dedicated speedrun day sends the message that non-speedrunners don't get to participate that day. Sure, some will accept this as a reason to try speedrunning, but I expect most players will just skip.

I think the thing which keeps Slay the Spire dailies fresh is the randomized modifiers, and I could easily see something similar working for Balatro. For starters, applying any boss modifier to the entire run:
"Must play less than 5 cards"
People are incentivized to interact with different builds/ game elements but overall still get to the play the game how they want and optimize for whichever scoring metric is personal to them.

upper scaffold
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I think several rankings would be the best. Perhaps highest ante, highest score and highest time

haughty finch
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we can play the same daily challenge multyple times right?

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to try to perfect a run.