#why "cannot be disabled by boss blinds" would, in fact, be the best way to buff wildcards

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

topaz inlet
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so this suggestion is kinda strange because i know that this idea for a wild card buff has been suggested many times by many people, but i feel like the actual benefits of this change are largely glossed over when the idea is discussed, so i wanted to provide a single place for the entire concept. cool? cool.

so, i feel like the best place to start would be discussing the 2 primary issues with wildcards. firstly, they provide basically no benefit to builds that don't benefit from the suit of cards. now, this wouldnt be a huge issue if those builds were common, but unfortunately, flush builds kinda suck, and there are very few non-flush jokers which care about card suits. so, for the majority of builds, wild cards, and by extenion lovers, are basically useless. or, they would be, if not for the second issue: there are 4 boss blinds that debuff them. this changes wild cards from useless to actively detrimental, sometimes even for the jokers that would hypothetically like them. all of this combined makes wild cards extremely bad, and frequently either ridiculed or forgotten

now, this proposed buff pretty clearly counters issue 2, which the primary reason people suggest it. wild cards would no longer be so vulnerable to boss blinds, and would become far more useable for not just flush builds, but jokers like flowerpot, ancient, and seeing double as well. i dont feel like i need to explain this part, its pretty clear how this fixes issue 2.

however, the part of this buff that i dont see as talked about is how this also solves issue 1! if wild cards are immune to bosses, it gives them actual use for builds other than flush builds. obviously, its great to put on blue and purple seals for pair builds, but i think the true value lies elsewhere. its pretty well known that a major reason certain builds are known for being weak is due to debuffing bosses absolutely killing them. with wild cards providing a defense against that, it makes protection far more accessible

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this also helps remedy the fact that blinds that hard-counter certain builds are just unfun and make the game more annoying and restrictive to play. turning the plant from "your build dies, sorry", to "shit, i didnt make enough wild cards" puts the control back into the hands of the player, as well as making building runs around this a more engaging experience. you'd have to weigh the value of other enhancements with the chance of getting destroyed by a boss blind, creating a game of risk management

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i believe that if this is how wild cards were changed, it would very much help diversify the stagnating and uninteresting meta

silent prism
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I think the problem I have with this is that it’s boring, and it still doesn’t really fix the issue with flushes scaling poorly and wolds not really doing much

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If hypothetically steel cards were really bad and only gave 1.1x mult, then making them not be debuffed by bosses wouldn’t really fix the core problem. Same would go for wilds where it’s like ‘oh, they don’t get debuffed? Ehh they’re still dookie’

empty acorn
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Band-Aid solution but I do think if they would be better off with than without in the current balatro landscape

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I do agree flushes need more prominence, but they scale poorly due to how suits work in a fixable enviroment so its a really tough thing to 'fix'

topaz inlet
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and my point was never about flushes anyways, having a card be unable to be debuffed by bosses at all makes it help fix the design issue of debuffing bosses

silent prism
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True, I see what you’re getting at but I do think that it’d take away from what makes a wild card a wild card if it’s intended to be used against plant for example. At that point it’d be a debuff preventer first, suit enabler second which just seems wrong.

I think what wild cards need are a few more suit jokers, including ones that aren’t just pure scoring. For example, something like Rough Gem being just money, Castle persisting between rounds, etc. mean that you’re not screwed into their respective bosses. If we have new suit jokers that aren’t like Bloodstone then we wouldn’t need a bandaid fix that isn’t thematic.

topaz inlet
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i think thats fair, but i still think there should be something which makes it so cards cant be debuffed bc i really do think debuffing bosses are a really huge design issue and certainly part of the reason on-score jokers, especially facecards, are so weak to build around

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plus, honestly, i dont think the change being added to wild cards is really that unthematic

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like its a bit strange but if it was there from the start i dont think anyone would think it strange

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at least compared to like gold or steel cards

silent prism
topaz inlet
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yeah i think thats fair

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thing is id prefer it to be a tarot, so you cant get screwed over by just not seeing it as easily, but there really isnt space there

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and wild is the best place to put it

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without doing something like merging the suit changers

fossil patio
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I think Issue 2 is solvable as well by changing the suit bosses, such as by reducing it to one boss that debuffs the most common suit

topaz inlet
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ive heard this idea before, and ive never really liked it that much tbh

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it doesnt really do anything other than making wild cards slightly less actively detrimental and freeing up space for more, more difficult boss blinds

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which doesnt actually solve anything

fossil patio
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i think freeing up space is useful to allow pair nerfs—currently most bosses harm big hands while not particularly affecting the pair build

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pairslop feels to me like a loophole, as if thunk didn't design the game with pairs in mind, leading to a system where pairs can coast past all of the mechanics meant to force the player to use skill

topaz inlet
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nerfing pair builds would only make the game harder and more inconsistent, its more important to address the reasons that other hands arent viable