#Pseudo-RNG for Wheel of Fortune and Blind Skip rewards.

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

main swallow
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I almost never engage with the skipping blinds mechanic. A 1 in 5 chance of a negative joker, vs the 4-8 money I'll get for playing the blind is a pretty drastic difference in value. Same with Wheel of Fortune vs the other cards in packs or the shop. And it's always a let down when I fail because I just lost money for nothing.

I would suggest that if the player fails one of these "1 in X" rolls, the next roll of the same mechanic should become easier to achieve. A few ways this could scale from a 1/5 chance:

  • Decrease the denominator: 1/5, 1/4, 1/3...
  • Increases the numerator: 1/5, 2/5, 3/5...
  • Roll X more times per previous failure
    Once the player succeeds a roll, the numbers reset back to a default. This makes skipping much more viable, as the player knows even if they fail, they still made progress towards a successful attempt in the future. It also maintains the random nature of the system so people can get exceptionally lucky or unlucky with it.

There could even be Jokers or Vouchers that interact with it:

  • When you fail an RNG check, the "pity scaling" is twice as effective.
  • When you succeed in an RNG check, gain X gold where X was the denominator (or numerator).
  • The currently existing "oops all 6's" Joker that's not in the Demo.

Obviously the base chances for all RNG stuff would have to be reduced to not just make the game easier. Or perhaps every success makes the default chance smaller (a 1/5 chance goes down to 1/6, then 1/7 ect)?
I have no idea if this would actually be an improvement or not, or if other people even have the same problem as me here. I just think the mechanic of Skipping Blinds is difficult to engage with.

image.png
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This is at least partially inspired by Dota 2's Random Distribution system: https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Random_Distribution

Dota 2 Wiki
Random Distribution

Randomness is sometimes rejected from competitive gaming since it can decide over loss and defeat without reflecting the actual skill level. However, coping with the unexpected is an aspect of skill. Nonetheless there are a couple of random events within Dota 2, that keep the game less predictable and static. To limit the influence of huge strea...

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Oh yeah, a less complicated version of this idea would just be "If you reroll in the shop you still have that 1 in X chance of getting the thing."
Basically tags stick around until you leave the shop.

narrow blade
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yeah, basic 1/X rng is really boring in games

zenith zephyr
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Balatro uses seeds to generate randomness for runs

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so everything technically is predetermined

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in terms of the pity system

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i dont really think i would affect the game too much, nor it is really needed

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the purpose of blind skips, or what i believe them too, is to skip over a blind, sacrificing a shop and the blind cash reward for either a boost in the next round or a chance for a better joker

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aka tempo in a sense

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if a pity system was implemented

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all probabilties would need to have one

main swallow
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It being predetermined doesn't really change anything? Like if the seed says "by pure chance you'll need to use the Wheel of Fortune 10 times before it actually procs" then that's still no fun.

zenith zephyr
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the seed doesn't "say"

main swallow
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Yeah I know I'm just phrasing it like that for the argument

zenith zephyr
main swallow
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I don't believe it would have to be applied to all rng.

zenith zephyr
zenith zephyr
main swallow
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Just say the pity system does not affect chances for negative events.

zenith zephyr
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this creates another inconsistency in a way

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in the full game there is a joker called "Oops! All 6s!"

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which doubles ALL probabilties (negative ones too)

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a pity system's purpose is to guarantee an event that happens by chance to happen if the pseudo random generator doesnt proc that event in the specified amount of rolls

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i'd perfer to not have a pity system for glass cards breaking

novel hare
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blind skip rewards are probably getting reworked

main swallow
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You think?

zenith zephyr
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tbh i think they might

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some rewards are WAY underwhelming than others

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like free mega arcana / celestial

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compared to free spectral

main swallow
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heh, yeah

novel hare
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dev was spitballing having spectral be the blind skip reward in some fashion, nothing concrete but it was on the table

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(again, no guarantees)

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read around for context

main swallow
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Yeah, game development is a chaotic buisness, I should know.

novel hare
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but yeah I think the general consensus is that most of the current blind skip rewards are never worth or nearly never worth and the dev is aware of the sentiment

zenith zephyr
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ill list them:

reroll boss blind: pick if hunting for boss blinds
add 3 hands: rarely picked
add 3 discards: rarely picked
free mega arcana pack: barely picked
free mega celestial pack: barely picked
free spectral pack: almost always picked
guaranteed uncommon in shop: eh
1/3 chance rare in shop: eh
1/2 chance foil: eh
1/3 chance holo: eh
1/4 chance poly: ooh but too risky
1/5 chance negative: ooh but too risky
add voucher tag: useless if you are broke
investment tag: good for kickstarting econ
gold seal in shop: very never picked
enhanced card in shop: very never picked

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in this list

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a lot of the tags are "eh"

clever vessel
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i love free mega arcana pack and free spectral pack

i do not use voucher tag at. all.
same with gold seal and enhanced card

cinder nova
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i like +3 discards if im going agained that one blind

jaunty wadi
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The proposal is to only have a pity system for the tags

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Other random events have multiple trials

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So they happen almost surely as you try them again and again

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Skip rewards can’t be retried in a single run, so they’re different

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Also—I agree with the overall sentiment that 1 in n randomness isn’t fun… for us

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I think it’s fine that there exist mechanics that use it, even if I personally don’t want to engage with them (looking at you, banana)

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But I think Blind Skipping would be a more interesting mechanic if the rewards were more guaranteed, either by persisting until you received it and/or by increasing in odds

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You can compute new probabilities that maintain the same expected value without being too complicated, how DotA 2 does it

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The variance will be different, but not so different that I think it will impact the game negatively