Top 3 Mistakes People Make When Thinking About Balatro | Balatro Chat #1 | Balatro 

It's very funny hearing a statistician say a big number followed by "whatever that means." Thank you for the video as always, Ser Jorbs

In the recent AMA the dev said that instead of providing perfect information the game is, to them, more about setting up your weird Rube Goldberg machine and wondering if it will make number big enough, hence the flames etc. But they also acknowledge this inherently means poor QOL. Personally I like this vision for the game, but I'm also an "after work", A11 spire enjoying, casual :P. Thanks for the great Balatro content Jorbs!

I've been playing the game a lot and I think I disagree with you on the "showing score" point. Or maybe disagree is the wrong word. I think it's true for you and people who like minmaxing. I understand it's frustrating to repeatedly pull up a calculator to be precise, but for me personally, I actually really enjoy that element of the design where it doesn't tell me. You have a general idea of the strength of your hand, and then seeing it go up at the moment - it evokes a certain excitement. You can meticulously build a deck around glass poly cards that you avoid playing, until you do, and seeing it blow up the first time - it's really fun. A lot of that magic goes away if I know the value in advanced. When I contemplate whether I need to play that one glass card to survive. Sure I could calculate to be exact, but I don't want to. It's like a gamble, like throwing dice and seeing it fall. It actually kinda plays off the whole poker aesthetic too. It's not gambling but it's almost like watching a roulette spin and going "come on come on". Especially with all the RNG elements like bloodstone and lucky cards, whether glass will break, etc. How would you even show a calculation like that? I dunno, just mu two cents

Balatro is such an interesting dichotomy. Like you describe, there's such an engaging and complex strategy game at its base, but visually and stylistically basically the entire focus is on *spectacle*. And it's *really* good at the spectacle. I think the way most people play Balatro, and the way that seems to be promoted by the game itself, is to make all these same decisions you talk about and understand the tension between scoring enough points to win the round and gaining longer-term value, but just to make the decisions based on vibes. Not actually do any of the calculations, but instead just use intuition to form vague guesses about the likelihoods of things happening or the score of prospective hands. That's definitely the way I play, because I enjoy the strategy of the game but I wouldn't enjoy actually going through the mental maths to arrive at concrete probabilities. I agree with you here: I would enjoy the game more if it was more transparent with these numbers upfront and I could use those to inform my decisions instead of vibes.

I think you make a really good point about people skipping blinds too much. It's probably due to the fact that the opportunity cost of skipping is not precisely known and not that easy to estimate, which of course doesn't mean it's not big (as you well illustrated). So in the moment it tends to seem less significant than the shiny object right in front of you, the tag reward. A mistake that perhaps people make in life as well as games.

The thing I think people are getting confused about here is that they are thinking improving the UI to provide this information is giving the player info they don't have. That isn't the case. This is nothing like frozen eye vs no frozen eye. Frozen eye gives you information that you *don't have* There is no skill expression associated with intuiting the score outcome, because at a high level players are already using spreadsheets to know the exact score outcome.

I definitely agree on the idea of showing how many points a hand is worth, and reducing the animations. I think I disagree on showing the probabilites after a discard, because after the first or second blind, they're already too intricate to display precisely. What's the point of showing 40% chance to see a flush if you what you actually need is to hit a flush/straight/full house - but with 3 even numbers to get enough Joker procs to win? StS shows you how much damage your attacks will do, but it doesn't show you % chance to draw an attack or % chance to draw a lethal Catalyst off an Acro. And I think that's less because the information would detract from the experience, and more because (as you noted), it gets exponentially more complex to figure out what information is even worthwhile to show.

The dev is still working hard on the game and in a recent Q&A they said that they are taking all feedback to heart. That said, their goal is to create a game that they personally enjoy playing, so we'll have to see how that shakes out. I think the game will become deeper and more engaging as time goes on. With regards to the score predictions: the dev sees both sides for this one and hasn't decided yet. Given how much I'm doing the calculations myself I think I'm down to seeing the scores at this point. It wouldn't surprise me if they were to make it a toggle option in the settings in the end.

I'm generally somebody who plays really loose in deckbuilders, and i iterate fast because i enjoy playing off the cuff. Part of why i think balatro is fun but not an all-timer for me is that i feel like it both tries to push me to exaggerate that play style, but also doesnt give me access to the kind of information i need to meaningfully improve as a player without breaking out the spreadsheet, whereas in some other games i feel like i slowly develop a feel for good plays given enough time

The devs made the correct choices, in my opinion. This game provides so many lows and near-danger situations which makes the moments of "the perfect hand" feel so damn good. This is a game based on gambling and it very much feels like that is what I am SUPPOSED to feel as I play. Sometimes a game doesn't need to be solved with 1000's of hours of testing and data. Sometimes it's just there to have a good time.

As a longtime StS fan, I was excited for the potential I saw in Balatro, but not showing point value for hands does irk me as well precisely because, as you stated, the game is not really about watching number go up mindlessly. It has that veneer but the incentives are different. Accidentally missing the kill or getting the kill too early when you're trying to do scaling stuff is frustrating, and a simple preview you could turn on in the options could fix this (and just show a range or percentages for Lucky cards or Glitch or whatever). This ties into the other thing that irks me about Balatro, and even StS to a lesser degree. The "side quests" as you called them, but I'd just generalize it as any kind of resource that could be generated inside a fight and that carries beyond the current fight. This leads to a lot of degenerate behaviors from a game design perspective, like stalling a fight in StS for many turns and multiple reshuffles to ensure you get Incense Burner on 5 and Ink Bottle on 9 and also land a Feed as the last card played for full setup and scaling. I've been there done that and find it a bit exhausting compared to the "actual game" of maximizing your hits and odds that StS and Balatro both share. I think both games would be better off eschewing this design space, because while it can be fun "randomly triggered" incremental value if you play "normal", its existence makes playing optimally that much more of a chore. My StS rework pet idea is changing any card that gives any form of scaling and changing "counter relics" like Incense Burner to randomize their counts at the start of each fight so there's no benefit to gaming them. I'm more than aware this might be an unpopular opinion, but I'm curious to hear other's thoughts about it!

Great video, i think balatro is so interesting both as a game and as a discussion of wherein the “game” truly lies. I think that a calculator option which can be toggled on and off probably does solve a bulk of people’s gripes with the interface. misunderstanding the impact of a decision such as choosing to skip a fight doesn’t seem like a game interface problem to me, in all card games decision weighing is 90% of the challenge (and thus the game) no?

My guess is someone will make a calculator mod, no? The dev said they won’t be adding one natively but will support mods.

I can absolutely see where you and your feelings are coming from, but I think what you're missing is that you're very much in the minority with what you find fun. Most people aren't finding any fun in trying to find the play that wins 47% of the time instead of the play that wins 43% of the time. And the reason for that is exactly your first point: you'll never know if the play you made was the mathematically optimal one (and by that I mean exactly what you mean, the play that wins the run with the highest probability), you'll only ever know the outcome. At a certain point, you cannot make sure your decision is better than a certain other decision. And that's fair, the game is complex. No matter how much you think about it, you're going to make a decision that is not a 100% informed one, and that's why it's not nice to want even more and more and more information out of the UI. If you are the type of person that's interested in the mathematics of it, you'll be able to figure out the easier things (just like you did in the video). If you aren't though, what would be your reaction to seeing all these percentages in the UI? To me, it feels like most people would be turned off by that and say that the game is not for them. (I know this because I have seen games where I went 'oh man, this is really complicated' in the first 10 minutes of the demo and never looked back at them, and I consider myself to be similar to you in interests.) To most people, the decision not to include any of that stuff is most probably the right decision. That said, if the game did go in that direction and tried to appeal to you more, it could do that by locking all that stuff behind something that already proved you aren't fazed by any of that difficulty, for example, winning a run on gold stake or something.

If the game UI were to show statistics of drawing X, hand score before played, etc. It would make the game incredibly boring and dry - it would essentially be telling you what choice you should make. The joy of playing Balatro comes directly from assessing these choices yourself, calculating risk/reward, being presented with numerous choices and drawing your own conclusions. If the game suddenly shows you spreadsheet-like statistics and hand-scoring capabilities before playing, etc - then what game are we actually "playing" at that point?

Seems like the simplest "fix" to most of your issues would be a setting you can toggle to replace the flame animation with showing your expected score. That way it remains the same for people who just want to be surprised by the flame. The're some situations where the final score is hidden info of course, but a question mark is already being used in other scenarios.

its a really good take, just seeing you play made me change my perspective on it and really made me interesting for going for every gold stake

Interesting discussion. I think I have basically the same viewpoint where I don't find the decision making for endless runs to be particularly interesting, while maximizing high difficulty win probability is pretty fascinating. Definitely agree that the lack of a scorer is just a mental tax that I don't enjoy. I do have a couple of other issues with the game that may be alleviated by more play and more experience. I'm not a huge fan of the number of early game deaths due to the first few stores having no viable frontloaded jokers. I may be wrong here, but my intuition is that there are more close to unwinnable runs in Balatro than say Spire, and this isn't due to skipping blinds, I rarely skip blinds early on in runs. The game really doesn't give you a lot of looks at outs for the ante 2 boss or start of ante 3. I'd rather the game smooth out the variance a bit by weighting jokers more heavily early on, and compensate by making the numbers higher so the difficulty isn't lowered by too much. The second issue is that boss blinds are a bit all in, with some of them either murdering your deck or doing nothing at all. This can be mitigated by making decks more flexible, but I specifically hate that the first shop in an ante does not allow you to view the boss blind. Going from 2 to 3 shops worth of information would go a long way here in making the bosses feel less like a gut punch. Currently it feels like the bosses hyper targer specific deck archetypes, and you get minimal time to try and find a solution. It would be like having a deck super weak to Collector but only getting 5 floors to solve that problem.

I think I agree with the devs decision to not have perfect information of the hand score for 2 reasons that I feel aren't talked about: 1. Countering decision paralysis has very real value in a game with infinite possibilities. Especially in Balatro, where there isn't even a hand timer to pressure your quick thinking. The value is that players don't feel the need to minmax every single hand if a rough estimation will work. Say the previous hand a flush scores 10,000 points, you know that if you don't change your jokers your hands are roughly worth 10K and you can use that information to either not be worried about this specific blind or you have to optimize your next few hands to just scrape by. What this shortcut provides players are rounds in which they don't have to feel worried about meeting the blinds and leaves their brain capacity for critical moments. I'm worried that with a calculator, a player will be constantly worried about optimizing their hands without realizing that certain moments aren't critical. And without moments of reprieve, Balatro would be a massive slog hand to hand. 2. Intuiting an estimated hand value or choosing the correct hands to play is the ultimate form of skill expression in this game. I've watched this game from the beta and while I'm not the greatest player, my skills at it have definitely increased. Watching people who are good at this game is fun in that their intuition is better than mine, they can do some of mental math it takes to optimize a run. Where aim is the skill expression of a pro fps player or timing is the skill expression of a fighter player, watching good strategy gamers is rewarding for their decision making. The draw of watching content of this game and also getting better at this game comes from making the right calls over and over again, which really you can only do if you keep playing it.

As someone who loves math, I always calculate an estimate in my head and I enjoy when I am right and learn when I'm not.

Your suggestions are mod suggestions not core gameplay suggestions, I personally enjoy the mental math that is required to play at a high level, an in built QOL calculator will most likely make me stop playing. It is very skill expressive to be able to ball park probabilities, while at the same time considering the strategic aspects you mention. Furthermore there is a big surprise element is making huge hands out of nowhere, and randomly drawing a straight flush when looking for something else which your ideas totally ruin. Specifically the hand drawing chance is a very hard Idea to implement in a simple way. For example multiple discards change the probabilities dramatically. Specifically the idea of a calculator is also hard to implement because of RNG elements like lucky cards random jokers ect. Also both ideas become void in the case of face down bosses, which would feel like a dramatic shift from the rest of the game if you implement those QOL changes.

i appreciate your work, i just dont see why a game like balatro needs to be "solvable" tbh

23:40 insane(ly great) analogy lmao. I love the number go up randomness and guesswork of the game but totally understand the frustration at how much the game hides from you when you just wanna get a win.

I've made a mug cake, so I think I'm ready for Powerpoint Jorbs.

I feel like the best solution here is to actively embrace the concerns you have with the UI and offer them as an option for players who have reached Gold Stake already. Call it "Nerd Mode" or something on-theme and disable achievements or something so it doesn't run the risk of defeating the intended purpose of the game while still allowing strategy gamers to have the style of experience they desire.

I agree with everything you said. I was pleased that i already avoided the most common mistakes, and hearing you say it helps give confidence to my decision making. I also find myself spending most of my time doing math instead of playing the game. I always set arbitrary points like "ill stop doing math when i get glass cards or start retriggering cards" but i end up doing the math anyway if its even close in magnitude. The only thing counterargument to putting the final score is thay some jokers/card abilities are chance based, such as the lucky card. And I also do understand the idea of "gambling" where you just throw up the best hand you could make and hope it scores high enough. However, knowing how much each hand would score would make it much easier to decide on a stronger strategy, "should I play 2 hands or use a hand to discard for a better hand", and other actually "fun" decisions, as opposed to "am i actually gonna do this math in my head rn?"

I got joy from this game trying out new jokers and other buffs to figure out what worked without doing the math and just learning what things could scale well to allow for more successful runs. It was fun to see how high you could get a bus pass by the end of the run and then when discovering a joker that does Xmult seeing how vastly that improved it. Then I realized I was also underestimating the jokers that give you more chips, and I kept learning more and more about what was good and what wasn't as I went. The music, the art, the sense of wonder unlocking things, discovering all of the new blinds, enhancements, secret planets, etc. and finally getting victories and scores I didn't know were possible are all things I cared so much more about in this game than knowing for certain that I'm always making the best possible play or having to think for a bit to try to calculate it. In getting to the end of the experience, I think it could be nice to have a better idea of the numbers without mental math in every run, but if anything I think that aspect is largely unimportant to the whole experience of the game.

I think the devs were correct to hide most of the information as it encourages players to play in a way that I think most players will find fun. I think it would be really easy to for players to get stuck in decision paralysis as the math underlying most decisions is incredibly hard/impossible for a human, by hiding even the relatively basic calculation of how many points a hand is worth it encourages the player to play based on vibes. I actually think Slay the Spire is quite good at hiding this information as well. Until I started watching Jorbs I had no idea about all but the most obvious attack patterns, rare drop rates, event probabilities, etc. and I think for most players never considering any of that stuff is a much better way to play the game. If you let them gamers are always going to min/max the fun out of a game and I think a huge part of being a game designer is discouraging the player from doing things that will hurt their enjoyment of a game in pursuit of a higher win rate.

Really enjoyed hearing your thoughts, Jorbs. I think I largely fall into the same bucket of being compelled by the mathematics and the strategies at play, though ultimately (so far, and I'm only 50 hours deep) I land just slightly on the side of, "I'm not going to calculate these exact numbers, I'm going to play slightly by feel with a reasonable quick-maths approximation of where I'm at based on the hands I've already played this run." That means sometimes I'll lose runs that I might have just eked out, but given the nature of the game I'll also lose runs where I played close to perfectly following the optimal statistical play, but got unlucky and didn't draw the cards. So I think overall I'm okay with both instances, even though they can feel a little heartbreaking at times. I enjoy the fast-and-loose, slightly 'gambler' nature of the whole thing. But I can totally understand your frustration with the score element (maybe, given enough time, I'll get there too) and would be all for the inclusion of an optional 'show me the number' toggle in the menu.

Well if you have that Bus card, and you're just stacking that joker to have maximum buffing, then you're just maxing out High card plays with low value hands, while accounting for hitting the required $ goal. So in that scenario you're playing low value hands as much as possible. So yeah if the first point is "the game is... a strategy game... and strategy, has nuance, and you have to actually think about loads of stuff and therefore rules of thumb on work in an extremely general sense", then yes of course, lol. Only someone who is a newbie to complex strategy games will miss that point. Oh and obviously my example is only the most superficial possible example of complexity-- it gets overwheeeelmingly more complex, it's just a really basic example of how the "just play best hand" is confused Edit: Oh, interesting point now that you mention you hate the game not having a calc. I think that would be bad game design. It would overwhelm a general audience with math and probability. For a game like Balatro, the best move would be some sort of patch that you could add on if you prefer to add that sort of interface for hardcore gamers

TLDR: game is fun, but jorbs would like a built-in spreadsheet so they can focus on (for them) more interesting aspects of the game than guessing "how many points does this hand make"

I think it's interesting that this is definitely an argument as to what the game *should be*, and that fact isn't openly acknowledged. You say it makes the game worse, but does that really make it worse for the average player? I think that even though it makes it worse for you and probably most of your audience, as a lot of us are way more power gamer than the average person, still, it probably makes the experience way better for the sub-optimal player who generally wants to win but doesn't want to do math. My question is why is this card issue more of a problem in Balatro than in games like StS? I may be wrong / misremembering, but I've watched tons of your runs and spireside chats and I don't believe you've voiced this type of issue about specifically how the chances to get which cards on a draw isn't public information, though it is calculable given the information from the game. I do believe you have talked about having no damage calculation in sts and that makes a lot of sense.

I'd love most of the changes you've suggested and I think the best way to implement them would be to also be able to enable/disable them somewhere (in options or somewhere). Because some times I like to "beat the game" and other days I like to play more mindlessly and just see what interesting stuff will happen while not paying attention to "efficient" play. Cool talk.

Balatro feels like a game catering to people who think poker is easy and is based on luck and they could totally beat a pro poker player a lot of the time. That isn’t to say, “It’s a dumb game for dummies,” more that it’s for people who enjoy the slot machine aspect, rather than people who enjoy the probability aspect.

This was really interesting all the way through but the thing I seized on is how playing for broken endless mode scores vs. playing for reliable ante 8 completion kind of gets at the tension at the beating heart of gambling. It's quite possible to mathematically and precisely play, say, Blackjack to minimize losses for relatively reliable wins, and there's certainly a tranche of gamblers that do so, but the emotional hook of blackjack isn't there, it's in the big swings and flameouts, the impossible breaks and stories to tell when you get home. It's quite funny that Balatro replicates that in the way it does.

One thing I learned recently is that the creator of the game didn't put in a score preview or anything like that on purpose as it goes against the design philosophy of the Balatro he envisioned in his head, here was a quote from the guy: "In Balatro, my personal belief is that the game is more fun when you set up your Rube Goldberg machine and watch it go before knowing whether or not the hand will win the round. This adds some drama and suspense for players that don't feel like they need to know the exact score before pressing play. This has a pretty large design flaw though: Balatro is also a strategy game and not giving the player this tool is basically just poor quality of life for players that want to min-max their strategy, since they will want to do that legwork anyway." I think he's stuck in the middle of wanting to appeal to the casual audience that might not want to min-max every hand vs. those hardcore strategy gamers who do want to max EV value every hand and calculate every possible scoring hand which is a tough position to be in.

The score calculator would be nice. It feels a little bit like playing with Runic Dome in Slay the Spire. It is very much possible to compute the scores, but I would have to read the wiki, take detailed notes, and do a lot of boring arithmetic. To their credit, there are some situations where concealed or randomized information makes it impossible to calculate, but this is like 5% of the time. I would much rather prefer having it computed and have a separate ??? or "greater or equal" notice in edge cases. The stupid random joker kind of sucks, and there is a Blind that randomizes the order that the jokers trigger, which might matter too? idk. Kinda sucks though. If monster train can predict sequences, this shouldn't be any harder, aside from these special Runic Dome cases.

Thanks! I too love the math of drawing towards different hands but calculating score feels like a chore to me, you put that into words well.

Great video. Your notes bring to mind the possibility that this game was *made for streaming.* I think about how many broken runs get uploaded to RU-vid, which is a contrast from the typical player experience. The lack of information adds drama and the animation gives streamers a chance to engage with the audience. As for the game design and strategies, I’d also say a lot of players seem not to think about how their choices will further incentivize their play. If I take Cloud 9 and then I get a hanged man, I will have an incentive *not* to burn my 9s. I need to be aware of that tension when I’m deciding whether to take cloud 9, and it seems a lot of players don’t think about this.

I completely agree. For me, the hardest part of this game is to evaluate, for example, which is better: discard cards to try to go for a full house, or for a straight, or for a flush. The impact of knowing that would be huge and, at the same time, woudn't trivialize the game, as there are still a lot of depth regarding jokers, tarot, planets, etc. I was even thinking about coding some kind of add-on or mod that would make just that: show top plays and values for current hand, the value of selected cards and probabilities of plays for discards. Anyway, let's keep in mind that this is a single dev game and they are probably working on getting the game on more platforms, balancing given player analyctics, etc, and this game is amazing considering that it's the work of a single person. Let's support them and engage positively.

I think the main obstacle for a better UI is the amount of things that are true simultaneously when you add the luck component of the game. Your best hand might be if you put out a pair of Lucky cards and getting +20 mult on both. But maybe the best hand without luck is different. What number does the game show you since there are potentially 3 in this simple situation: 1. Both cards getting lucky 2. One of either card gets lucky (here it's a pair so it probably does not matter which one) 3. No card gets lucky and the hand is a dud Then add other Luck based Jokers, random cards like Misprint, etc. You could easily have hundreds of potential results for your hand and showing this is unreasonable. And sometimes, getting both cards with +20 Mult is the only way to win the hand. If you decide to show ??? instead if the total is based on luck, then so many runs will just not have any information

I agree with some points. I would like to have more info but I don't mind not having it either.

I think you would get a lot out of reading the developer's recent AMA about their design philosophy and why they want to support, first and foremost, the players that just want to see big numbers. The developer made a conscious design decision to not support the calculations you speak about at ~13:50 and they explain that decision in the AMA.

There's quite the amount of RNG in scoring, most prominently lucky cards, that showing a precalculated value doesn't make sense. Also delayed variable rewards do be fun sometimes. I do agree that having a better "base value" preview with chip and determined mult values of cards already factored in would be nice for the early levels.

I simultaneously agree, having reluctantly started doing spreadsheet stuff with the game today, and also I feel like some of these suggested changes might feel a bit like playing Slay the Spire always having Frozen Eye, in a bad way

agree with everything you said here. the "no easy solution" part has been kicking my ass 😭I've been playing ~10hrs and Ive only won twice building flush decks. I feel like im missing a core mechanic when attempting to build around other hands.

on turn ones starting with two pair i typically discard the low pair keeping a pair and a high card, drawing 5 vrs drawing 4, i feel like full house is almost always my solution to round one.

yeah as much as I see your point about not having perfect information, I'm absolutely on the developer's side of showing you less to discourage people from overloading your head with all the calculations. I see people creating a false dichotomy of "slot machines" vs "thoughtful poker strategy", but you can definitely stay in the middle and I'd say the amount of fun you get from playing that way is actually the most out of all of them. you have a general idea of what modifiers (be it enhancements or jokers) to put in what order, what cards you have in a deck and what direction to push your build into. some bosses also punish you for relying on perfect knowledge, such as the bosses that draw cards face down or amber acorn, so removing all of those aspects would make balatro into a completely different game. I don't have a good way to round this up so uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I also don't enjoy having to calculate how many points a hand will score, and i definitely don't enjoy unexpectedly losing the run when it turns out I marginally can't beat the boss blind in one hand like i thought I could. And that's why I stopped playing after a hand full of runs. I think the dev might add modding support, in which case more upfront values might be added in some mods. This would be a good option for players who don't get satisfaction from "watching the number go big". But such a thing seems unlikely to be added by the dev to the core game as seeing the score ahead of playing the hand is contrary to how he thinks of the game's ethos.

The point of the game is to get it to a point where it is solvable. Through use of jokers and other cards, you can solve it on an individual per game basis.

I like the idea at the end about percent chance of drawing a certain hand

Yessssssss spire side chats are back

Balatro is not a game of probabilities, it is a game of opportunities. It is a roguelike, like Binding of Isaac. Do people do math playing BoI? I enjoy Balatro a lot, and I never do math. You have to learn the cards by experience. I know the limits of my hands by intuition, because I’ve played so many hands! “Losing is fun”!

Thanks for sharing, this makes a lot of sense. The more high difficulty games I play the more it does feel like the bones of a very compelling strategy game are underneath the clown make-up.

Granted I already view these games in a certain way as I have ~800hrs in StS but I found myself agreeing with all the points here and thinking "yeah, I already consider those things" which is promising, still new to the game and enjoying it a lot. I can't imagine it would hook people if they were *only* playing it for "number go up" because then you literally might as well be playing a slot machine with no tangible earnings.

It's really unfortunate that Balatro has kept to that vibe-based gameplay for a game that's already complex and interesting. Adding in a toggle to show final scores before playing the hand wouldn't hurt the game, but that goes against their idea of what is fun about the game. For an example of what I mean, we almost didn't even get the ability to look at what's currently in your deck (not the order, just what hasn't been drawn), since there was a fear of too much optimization of play. A simple quality of life improvement was almost left out of the game because it didn't fit how the creator thought people should enjoy the game. I like the game a lot, but some of these decisions are baffling.

The dev did a Reddit AMA and it sounds like they don't intend to add a way to see scores before you play hands. It's unfortunate because as a min-maxer it's honestly one of the only things that puts me off from playing

Such calculation should not be done by the player nor the game, decision-making under uncertainty is the best part of the gameplay. The fact that you can calculate different odds and scores doesn't mean you should, it removes the fun, as you seem to have almost realised already. Such min-max calculation takes time, and that time is an additional resource in the game (and life). You gotta know when to back out.

Lots of people don’t like min maxing to a high level. I mean some do and this is the type of game that will attract those people. Personally I want to play on instinct rather than working out every possible probability. That sounds like a frustrating nightmare to me. At least we don't have to count cards.

I think talking about e.g. the number of states a shuffled deck can be in, is a bit missing the forest for the trees. What matters is the chances of making different hands based on the number of draws you get to add on to your remaining cards in hand - which is atronomically lower. While yes, it is unrealistic for a human player to calculate the correct play in real time, it a lot closer to possible than needing to calculate every possible combination of cards you could draw. edit: the hand upgrades reduce this further - if my flushes scores significantly more than even four of a kind, then the math for making my hand is greatly simplified (most of the time, obviously there are exceptions when you want to say play a low scoring 2-pair, but in general if you are angled towards a specific hand type the math becomes easier). edit2: definitely agree that we should not need to do manual point calculations - just show us the numbers.

Reading the comments, I don't think most people understand what your argument is.

Not that into math but i am into balatro and your voice was soothing

Showing the score would flat out ruin the game. Thankfully Local Thunk recognises that and has already said it's not happening. If you want to play this game with accurate statistical analysis then it's just not for you. It's not intended to be that kind of experience and would massively suffer for forcing it in. Maybe as a platinum achievement unlock type of deal but even then I'd personally rather not have it.

There has since been released a mod which displays the exact score expected from each selected hand before you play it by the lovely Divvy C. over on the Balatro discord. I exclusively play with this mod now, and while I would like the feature to be in the main game, and even hope that the developer will come around to the idea, I am at least content to play with the mod since in its current form it feels like the biggest hole in the gameplay loop is reconciled by just that mod's presence. Is there room for more influence over what jokers you see during a run, or more fundamental change to the standard play experience by more unique deck types that could be added later? Of course, but this score preview seems like the best and most important change when approaching the game from a strategic standpoint, to the point that I still get to adore it. I hope that you might find playing with the mod sufficient to find enjoyment in it yourself, but I also understand if you'd rather not altogether.

Imo, the biggest problem with the game is that mathematically, Flushes are by far the most effective way to play. It's easy to discard and fish for them for a fairly high return at the beginning, and obviously Five Flush later on is super good. I think if there is any way to improve the viability of Straights, that's the move. I don't see very many of them when I watch people stream the game to score big. I love the game, but this is my one recommendation

just wondering in case you're still replying to comments, do you think having an in-game calculator as a mod like many are suggesting would fix some/all of your issues with the game? i.e. calculators for either point value of individual hands, or odds of drawing different hands, or both

I think people who play casually, like me, don't need to see the score. There's tension, and still plenty of strategy. Testing several methods just makes it less fun, but that's just my opinion. I like the dev's intent

I think the blind I skip the most is the very first blind of the game for a 2 of 5 Tarot pack and not much else.

No, it is not intractably complex. It is however very complex, and I should not expect it to be able to be decided by a human agent without the use of heuristics.

I don’t mind not seeing the score (yet). The biggest problem for me is all the scaling chores. Like I feel like I’m trying to get dead branch to make an exhaust so I can pull off another feed (or make an echo form so I can dupe self repair) in every game.

On your wants at the end of the video: personally i disagree with he idea of telling you the percents of what you could draw from the deck, because thats part of the thinking process and strategy, and why most top level runners often try to thin their deck before/while they refine it. I semi agree with a "play max score hand" button, because while i think it would be nice, im worried about how that tool might become a crutch to newer players, and it doesnt engage thinking with the player. What if you could play 2 hands that are only slightly worse than the max hand, but break if you play max hand?what about if you re order jokers, how does that change your max hand? It just feels a bit, idk, off. I do agree about a calculator, or just telling you how much the hand would score. I think it should be an option in rhe settings, maybe it tells you the amount in the area to the left of the "play hand" button. While i dont think it should be mandatory, i do think it would significantly improve the game at higher and lower levels as a quality of life

I simply am a mentat so it's not an issue

Love this breakdown. I'm still struggling to the point that I am making spreadsheets just to get wins at a higher rate at low stake. I never even get to see the flashing lights and flaming numbers. Just tell me what the best hand is

Couldn't they easily add a toggle in the options menu (or hacked in with a mod) where the game will just show you (in the corner) the score for the chosen hand and the tally? And another option to just totally disable all the slot machine effects? Such an option might remove some of the fun and excitement but would be useful for the harder difficulty levels. Another mistake that beginner players make is not understanding the importance of card order (and joker order). The fact that your resulting score can change depending on the way you order your cards increases the complexity by orders of magnitude.

I don't think the strategy is particularly deep. I think Balatro is a vibes based game. If I want something really deep I'll play Slay the Spire *shrugs*

Just watch Haelian play. He has fun, scores big, explains his thought process, but doesn’t get bogged down in the math of it all.

Do you think just having mod support that adds the depth of information you desire. Since it feels like the desire of the developer is aimed at the showy aspect instead of the strategical aspects that you mentioned.

if you really wanted to calculate the odds of pulling a certain card, or drawing a certain hand, or how much a hand will score, it is really simple if you have a decent calculator nearby. a lot of button presses on that calculator a lot of the time sure, but it still can be done. It is all adding and multiplying after all, but having this information readily available would keep so many people away from the game, including myself. It wouldn't be nearly as fun to deck build. It'd be cool to have it as a really hard unlock, or a mod. Don't make it accessible from the start, I think it would take away from the appeal of the game to most people who don't care about optimizing every single hand.

The thing is its not wonderwall, the dj is playing despacito but the party is in an industrial warehouse

How would your request for point totals / the current maximum hand to be displayed in the UI work with the RNG elements of the game? Lucky cards, misprint joker etc? Show a range, show the mean, show the max, plot a distribution (this would be kind of pog tbh)? A card like ancient joker also makes it possible that one hand could be max if you get lots of triggers, or another hand could be better if not - how would this be represented Just mean to say it seems like a harder UI challenge to solve than you perhaps implied

One thing that's always universal. Players that play games competitively or at a high level all want the same the - less randomness. This, however, doesn't make the game "better" or "more fun". Being good at a game doesn't make you a good designer. For the vast majority of people, you need surprises to entertain in media. You need music choices that aren't formulaic. You need stories that don't follow a straight and predictable path. Without randomness in most game (sans something like Chess), there's no variety in gameplay. There's no reason to make a risky play because there's no reward for it. (Skip to the last paragraph for the TL;DR) I played an asymmetric strategy+FPS competitively a very long time ago and it had a non-uniform shotgun spread that was always the same. You could always tell if you could one-shot an enemy if they were close enough, unless they had a defense upgrade. This means that the other team always had to upgrade defense first. It made the game stale, unfun, and unbalanced most of all. Valve solved this issue in Team Fortress 2 with the mini-gun by combining the two ideas. The gun always has a bullet near the crosshair and always has a bullet random within a cone of fire. Players with good aim and tracking can hit distant enemies more, but at a significantly reduced amount of damage. Randomness alone, however, does not make a game complex. If that were true, then playing High Card would be a tremendously complex game because of the various states of the deck (more states than atoms known?). In Balatro, you don't need exact formulas to figure out the percentage of drawing a card. Even in Poker, high level players just use a fuzzy easy formula for estimating the chances of drawing a card (the rule of 4 and 2 for Holdem). You can do something similar with Balatro. With a single discard, your odds of hitting one of 4 outs is 4/45(default state) and about ~40%(?) with 5 discards, ~50% if repeated, and about 60% if repeated again (assuming I didn't screw up the math, which is probable). I'd guess that is about 12% chance of not hitting at least 1 of 4 outs after 3x5 discards. So, you're highly likely to make a full house if you already have 2 pair at the start and still very likely to make a full house with just a pair. After calculating a few scenarios, you can get simple guestimation that's close enough and memorize 3 or 4 similar stats to apply. You, however, can just count your "outs" and be rather successful without doing any fuzzy math. Balatro is intuitive. It spins a lot of plates in the air and still makes it easy to understand what's going on. This is one thing most games in the rouge-lite/deckbuilder genre do not do. When you see a Steel Card trigger the first time, you instantly see just how dramatic it can be. The experience teaches you the value way better than doing the math in a spreadsheet could do. You can see a combination of cards and Jokers firing and know your relative strength by audio and visual clues alone. You also see the order of the calculation and the value of a combination of both +Y and xY traits. It's not just a fun way to learn, it's accessible. I knew more about Balatro in 10 hours than I did after 80 hours in Slay the Spire - and I'm still lost in StS. All that being said, should Balatro show draw probabilities and/or approximate hand scores? Nope, or rather not without a game mechanic or limiting factor. For example, some strategies get hard countered by specific Boss Blinds. The game, however, has a few ways to re-roll the boss and there's even a Joker for a death save. So, there's still a chance to bypass a likely fail state in a fun way. I'd be fine with game-ified ways to peek at possible drawn cards or approximate hand scores. I'd argue that would make the game "better" and "more fun". A deck that shows hand strength? Why not!? Sounds like someone would find it fun.

I think two pair needs to be buffed to be 20x3 it feels so weak that I don't even play it anymore with out a planet or two or to top off a fight when I'm forced to play multiple hands or jokers that compliment two pair.

The fact that it doesn’t show a score is important to the game feeling like a slot machine or gambling.

I'm a late comer to this game but would appreciate the ability to toggle a score preview after some event, maybe once you win some # of runs or something similar.

I agree on the playing more blinds than skipping except one point which is arguable the first blind at high stakes. You don't get any payout so most you can get is $3. That's not a lot you can do at a shop so skipping feels a better?

i like the the presentation, i don't like the amount of encouragement to get the most out of every hand in balatro.

The game's theme is gambling, I think the appeal would be tremendously undercut if it did have perfect information before playing a hand. That moment when you have a hand and have to think "will this make enough?" that is the essence. Having perfect information would ruin those kinds of moments and outside of those moments it's kind of.... completely unnecessary? You don't get anything whether you beat a blind by a single point or score infinite. Also, you can just have a calculator or use your phone if you really want to? It's all addition and multiplication you don't really need more than that if you absolutely must see the exact numbers.

I think that there absolutely is a skill ceiling created by not giving the player the perfect statistical information/pre-calculated hand score - in the same way as there is one when needing to remember or intuit the chance of you hitting a hand in poker or even making a chess move without having concrete percentages from a chess engine on your screen to know if your new position is better statistically. Also I think that while maybe showing a bit more of this type of information (like what is the chance of me hitting a K after 3 discards, or similar) might be interesting, too much of that will swap the focus of the game and might only be enjoyable to a certain type of player to the detriment of others. As it is, the game is giving you a deceptively simple system that you get to slowly realize you need to understand in detail if you are to maximize hand score or deck building opportunity. Or you could keep playing it on a base level and not worry with its depth - to me that's good design. Also, personally comeing up on your own with a solution of why and how certain joker orderings might be better than others and testing that to see if you're right is quite fun.

Hypergeo distribution calculators can kinda get you there. Still not the perfect tool, though

Offering to the algorithm so this gets recomended : )

Thanks for doing the jorbs thing with this game. Insta click and full watch for me!

Almost think the reason it doesn't calculate your score is because it would be a bit easy? I think there's a mod to put it in the game or an online calculator if it really bothers you.

Pretty much how I feel about the game, it's fun...but holy crap it's infuriating sometimes. My main problem is no matter how good of joker combos you get, or what enhanced playing cards, tarots, planets, whatever...the game will screw you over at some point...just because...even the cards you draw during the round can screw you. lol

I agree with your point Jorbs but I find your language like “I don’t understand why the game doesn’t do a better job of supporting me playing it” to be frustrating. Games take a lot of time and effort to make, and generally are focused on a specific type of player especially around the initial launch. Some groups of players may not get proper support right out of the gate. I know you know this, I don’t understand why you felt the need to phrase it as if the problems are so self evident that the fact that they didn’t occur to someone who is different from you is unexplainable. The video is otherwise great, I hope the dev gets feedback and can integrate your suggestions.

There is a cheaty way to do what was requested in step 3 as the game is - you can play the highest scoring hand, let it calculate the score, and then go to main menu, then you will know the number for your hand without actually playing it yet.

did you ever paly dice throne? you might like it. sorry just watching this video made me think of that math ... might be to simple for you though.

When it comes to incremental advantages, how do you feel about the ui... Micromanagement. Obviously ordering jokers is good but when i have runs with the copy jokers and im swapping them between shop boosting jokers (like say the tarot generation on booster) and point boosting jokers every time without like, thought it feels kind of wierd and takes me out of the game

Absolutely nailed it. A billion percent right and apologize for ever doubting you Jorbs

Its weird to think people would say "play big score" instead of "play the hand that gives you the most currency" which is how i think of those games. Like no given hand is more important than the meta progression between hands Edit: I just learned about this game today lol

Games a time stealing demon