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Jorbs (a popular STS streamer) has said something like: If random shuffling of your deck can cause you to take 40 damage from Lagavaulin, and the game is still

Jorbs (a popular STS streamer) has said something like: If random shuffling of your deck can cause you to take 40 damage from Lagavaulin, and the game is still 100% winnable, then that 40 damage doesn’t matter at all. At which point the game is just not interesting, because most of the time you don’t take the 40 damage and the rest of the game is way too easy and low risk. With procedural generation, in order for most games to be challenging and interesting, you have to have games in which the game just stomps you.

taeric 6y ago
This is an odd thing that made the PSP Ghost and Goblins not fun at the hardest level. They made enemy positions a bit too random, such that you couldn't build a good reflex moving through the game and the environments. Which is to add that there is definitely a balance, and if you are going to have designed levels, I think it is more fun to have designed experiences. But I can see the case for both, and agree that I expect some games to stomp me by design to be part of the fun. I'm assuming there is a guiding principal here, but I don't know it.
ebg13 6y ago
"100% winnable" just means that you have a chance of winning if you do the right things at the right times in relation to what's happening in the game. Nobody wants to play a game that they don't even have a chance of winning even if they play optimally. Replay incentive comes from knowing that if you improve yourself you'll do better, not from flipping coins and hoping for a favorable outcome. > With procedural generation, in order for most games to be challenging and interesting, you have to have games in which the game just stomps you. Only if you have a chance of winning or you're given the chance to detect the situation and run away from the fight until you do have a chance of winning. Otherwise it's just annoying.
- brutt 6y ago
  > Nobody wants to play a game that they don't even have a chance of winning even if they play optimally. I play such games regularly. I'm just choosing place to die, then I try to stay alive as long as possible. Sometimes I even win, just because of pure luck. Then I win more often.
  - Falling3 6y ago
    Your first and last sentences are in direct contradiction.
    - minitech 6y ago
      You mean the first sentence that they quoted in order to disagree with?
      - Falling3 6y ago
        No, I do not mean the quoted section. They claim to play games where there is no chance of winning, then go on to claim they eventually win them often.
        brutt 6y ago
        Please, read or watch «Ender's_Game» novel. I started to like to play such games after reading it.
- theptip 6y ago
  > "100% winnable" just means that you have a chance of winning if you do the right things This is not the definition of winnable that the OP (and having listened to him discuss this on-stream, I'm pretty sure Jorbs as well) is using. From the article, > “Can a perfect player win every game of Slay the Spire?” (alternatively, “Is there a strategy that achieves a 100% win rate in Slay the Spire?”) "100% winnable" means that you are _guaranteed_ to win if you do the right things, not that you have a _chance_ to win under optimal play. What you're saying is the same thing as saying "a coin toss is 100% winnable, because you have a chance of winning if you do the right things". I don't think that's a useful way of defining "100% winnable" in the context of this discussion. (There is a loose conversational sense in which your interpretation could be valid; 100%=absolutely, "sure, 100% it's winnable" but these discussions are all using the technical narrow interpretation.)
  - ebg13 6y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding and getting caught up on my use of the word chance. "Chance" here means that winning is not foreclosed. If you prefer, let's change it to "opportunity". A winnable playthrough is one that you are given the opportunity to win, one that you will win if your skill is sufficiently high. Not one that anyone will always win, but one that CAN be won by skill. That's the "chance" or "opportunity" part. A non-winnable playthrough is one where you cannot win. A chess game where your opponent starts with all their pieces and you only start with a bare king is non-winnable. You literally cannot win. Nobody wants to play that game unless maybe you invent a different objective. For this context, calling a game "100% winnable" is appropriate if every playthrough is winnable, i.e. for every playthrough winning is not foreclosed. > What you're saying is the same thing as saying "a coin toss is 100% winnable, because you have a chance of winning if you do the right things This is a misunderstanding and completely the opposite of what I'm saying because there's no such thing as "the right things" for coin tosses other than "toss coin" unless you're cheating, because the coin toss is meant to approximate a random selection. Only being able to win by chance is literally the opposite of being 100% winnable. It means you'll lose many tosses without doing anything wrong unless you cheat. That's why tossing a coin is not a fun game.
  - dwild 6y ago
im3w1l 6y ago
Tetris uses very elaborate mechanisms to prevent the player from having a run of bad luck. Maybe techniques like that can be borrowed by other games.
- greenshackle2 6y ago
  Slay the Spire implements the gambler's fallacy in a number of places to even things out a bit. For example, the longer you go without finding a rare card or potion reward, the more likely you will find one, you never fight the same elite twice in a row, question mark rooms odds are adjusted to prevent seeing the same type of room too many times, a lot of enemies have semi-random attack patterns so that they don't just steamroll you with big attacks.
  - runevault 6y ago
    what are you calling semi-random? A lot of enemies have semi-hard coded patterns with certain parts of it having multiple options (I think this last part is as much to make the runic dome a bigger penalty as anything)
    - greenshackle2 6y ago
      Well, for example, Gremlin Leader and Reptomancer don't have hardcoded patterns but they will not do the same attack twice in a row, that's what I mean by "semi-random". A lot of enemies are like that, they cannot use the same move more than x times in a row. Some enemies have fully hardcoded patterns, or hardcoded patterns with multiple choices like you say, like the Heart. That's maybe less "semi-random" and more "hardcoded with a bit of randomness". (I'm not sure which is more common between the two actually, I don't pay that close attention to attack patterns of normal enemies.)
      - runevault 6y ago
        oh right I forgot about Gremlin leader's "patterns" you're certainly right about him. I should play StS again, but when I get the craving for a deck builder these days I'm playing Monster Train.
setr 6y ago
A roguelike (berlin interpretation) can be made always winnable, without this issue, because their fundamental goal differs from games like Slay the Spire -- a roguelike's victory condition is to steal the object in the depths, and escape, and enemy battles are just an aspect of that task; its not key to the gameplay. Which is why you can have no-kill runs, and non-combat-optimal builds and be successful. It's also why you can have a monster that spawned way too early and can one-shot you while rewarding nothing on death, and you can decide not to fight it. The 40 damage does matter, but you as a player decide as part of your risk management strategy whether its worth potentially being crippled, or killed, by such a monster. It also means a roguelike can introduce unbeatable creatures (at least at your current strength), or overly high risk-reward scenarios, and it doesn't mean the game is actually over. Slay the Spire on the other hand is a battle simulator -- a series of fights until you win. You don't get an option in the matter, because there is no grander goal. Which means the same monster that is a choice in a roguelike, is simply game over in StS. Jorbs is right about StS; he is not right about procedural generation. This is a direct result of the game's mechanics.
- runevault 6y ago
  Keep in mind Jorbs' bread and butter are particular types of games, in particular deck based roguelites and strategy games in the vein of the new X-Com series. Also before that he came from a poker background so a lot of his analysis of games comes through those lenses.
- chongli 6y ago
  I’m surprised to hear the Berlin interpretation brought up here. I thought for the most part that people had moved on. Anyway, a lot of classic (Berlin) roguelikes put you in situations where it is impossible to escape combat. If the enemy you’re facing is faster than you and you have no tools of escape, combat is probably unavoidable. So there are plenty of situations in a classic roguelike which are simply game over because you saw a monster (likely out of depth) you had no chance of beating. It may be unlikely if the game throws lots of escape tools at you, but there’s always the chance you don’t get any of them on a given seed.
  - 6y ago
jorbs_ 6y ago
a problem with this sort of analysis is that it describes what the game is like when you play it with perfect knowledge of the seed you're playing and as many resets as you want. that isn't how almost anybody plays slay the spire, so it doesn't have practical relevance to what playing the game is like. it's cool as a theoretical exercise, but the answer ultimately doesn't matter for almost any human player of the game, and isn't a relevant thing for considering how the game should be designed and balanced. if we finally brute force every option from a difficult seed two years from now and find out that you actually can't beat it in any way that's not going to change how good or enjoyable the game is for people. the more problematic thing is all the seeds where a reasonable player dies because "good" play dies. any seed you can eventually beat by retrying and taking bad cards/playing cards in bad orders until one of the reshuffles or card rewards lines up perfectly to get you past your hump is functionally problematic in all the ways that a truly unbeatable seed would be theoretically problematic. playing spire at a high level requires accepting that you run into those sorts of seeds sometimes.
- aoeusnth1 6y ago
  Absolutely on point. I didn’t realize jorbs read HN.

taeric 6y ago

This is an odd thing that made the PSP Ghost and Goblins not fun at the hardest level. They made enemy positions a bit too random, such that you couldn't build a good reflex moving through the game and the environments. Which is to add that there is definitely a balance, and if you are going to have designed levels, I think it is more fun to have designed experiences. But I can see the case for both, and agree that I expect some games to stomp me by design to be part of the fun. I'm assuming there is a guiding principal here, but I don't know it.

ebg13 6y ago

"100% winnable" just means that you have a chance of winning if you do the right things at the right times in relation to what's happening in the game. Nobody wants to play a game that they don't even have a chance of winning even if they play optimally. Replay incentive comes from knowing that if you improve yourself you'll do better, not from flipping coins and hoping for a favorable outcome. > With procedural generation, in order for most games to be challenging and interesting, you have to have games in which the game just stomps you. Only if you have a chance of winning or you're given the chance to detect the situation and run away from the fight until you do have a chance of winning. Otherwise it's just annoying.

brutt 6y ago
> Nobody wants to play a game that they don't even have a chance of winning even if they play optimally. I play such games regularly. I'm just choosing place to die, then I try to stay alive as long as possible. Sometimes I even win, just because of pure luck. Then I win more often.
- Falling3 6y ago
  Your first and last sentences are in direct contradiction.
  - minitech 6y ago
    You mean the first sentence that they quoted in order to disagree with?
    - Falling3 6y ago
      No, I do not mean the quoted section. They claim to play games where there is no chance of winning, then go on to claim they eventually win them often.
      - brutt 6y ago
        Please, read or watch «Ender's_Game» novel. I started to like to play such games after reading it.
theptip 6y ago
> "100% winnable" just means that you have a chance of winning if you do the right things This is not the definition of winnable that the OP (and having listened to him discuss this on-stream, I'm pretty sure Jorbs as well) is using. From the article, > “Can a perfect player win every game of Slay the Spire?” (alternatively, “Is there a strategy that achieves a 100% win rate in Slay the Spire?”) "100% winnable" means that you are _guaranteed_ to win if you do the right things, not that you have a _chance_ to win under optimal play. What you're saying is the same thing as saying "a coin toss is 100% winnable, because you have a chance of winning if you do the right things". I don't think that's a useful way of defining "100% winnable" in the context of this discussion. (There is a loose conversational sense in which your interpretation could be valid; 100%=absolutely, "sure, 100% it's winnable" but these discussions are all using the technical narrow interpretation.)
- ebg13 6y ago
  I think you're misunderstanding and getting caught up on my use of the word chance. "Chance" here means that winning is not foreclosed. If you prefer, let's change it to "opportunity". A winnable playthrough is one that you are given the opportunity to win, one that you will win if your skill is sufficiently high. Not one that anyone will always win, but one that CAN be won by skill. That's the "chance" or "opportunity" part. A non-winnable playthrough is one where you cannot win. A chess game where your opponent starts with all their pieces and you only start with a bare king is non-winnable. You literally cannot win. Nobody wants to play that game unless maybe you invent a different objective. For this context, calling a game "100% winnable" is appropriate if every playthrough is winnable, i.e. for every playthrough winning is not foreclosed. > What you're saying is the same thing as saying "a coin toss is 100% winnable, because you have a chance of winning if you do the right things This is a misunderstanding and completely the opposite of what I'm saying because there's no such thing as "the right things" for coin tosses other than "toss coin" unless you're cheating, because the coin toss is meant to approximate a random selection. Only being able to win by chance is literally the opposite of being 100% winnable. It means you'll lose many tosses without doing anything wrong unless you cheat. That's why tossing a coin is not a fun game.
- dwild 6y ago

im3w1l 6y ago

Tetris uses very elaborate mechanisms to prevent the player from having a run of bad luck. Maybe techniques like that can be borrowed by other games.

greenshackle2 6y ago
Slay the Spire implements the gambler's fallacy in a number of places to even things out a bit. For example, the longer you go without finding a rare card or potion reward, the more likely you will find one, you never fight the same elite twice in a row, question mark rooms odds are adjusted to prevent seeing the same type of room too many times, a lot of enemies have semi-random attack patterns so that they don't just steamroll you with big attacks.
- runevault 6y ago
  what are you calling semi-random? A lot of enemies have semi-hard coded patterns with certain parts of it having multiple options (I think this last part is as much to make the runic dome a bigger penalty as anything)
  - greenshackle2 6y ago
    Well, for example, Gremlin Leader and Reptomancer don't have hardcoded patterns but they will not do the same attack twice in a row, that's what I mean by "semi-random". A lot of enemies are like that, they cannot use the same move more than x times in a row. Some enemies have fully hardcoded patterns, or hardcoded patterns with multiple choices like you say, like the Heart. That's maybe less "semi-random" and more "hardcoded with a bit of randomness". (I'm not sure which is more common between the two actually, I don't pay that close attention to attack patterns of normal enemies.)
    - runevault 6y ago
      oh right I forgot about Gremlin leader's "patterns" you're certainly right about him. I should play StS again, but when I get the craving for a deck builder these days I'm playing Monster Train.

setr 6y ago

A roguelike (berlin interpretation) can be made always winnable, without this issue, because their fundamental goal differs from games like Slay the Spire -- a roguelike's victory condition is to steal the object in the depths, and escape, and enemy battles are just an aspect of that task; its not key to the gameplay. Which is why you can have no-kill runs, and non-combat-optimal builds and be successful. It's also why you can have a monster that spawned way too early and can one-shot you while rewarding nothing on death, and you can decide not to fight it. The 40 damage does matter, but you as a player decide as part of your risk management strategy whether its worth potentially being crippled, or killed, by such a monster. It also means a roguelike can introduce unbeatable creatures (at least at your current strength), or overly high risk-reward scenarios, and it doesn't mean the game is actually over. Slay the Spire on the other hand is a battle simulator -- a series of fights until you win. You don't get an option in the matter, because there is no grander goal. Which means the same monster that is a choice in a roguelike, is simply game over in StS. Jorbs is right about StS; he is not right about procedural generation. This is a direct result of the game's mechanics.

runevault 6y ago
Keep in mind Jorbs' bread and butter are particular types of games, in particular deck based roguelites and strategy games in the vein of the new X-Com series. Also before that he came from a poker background so a lot of his analysis of games comes through those lenses.
chongli 6y ago
I’m surprised to hear the Berlin interpretation brought up here. I thought for the most part that people had moved on. Anyway, a lot of classic (Berlin) roguelikes put you in situations where it is impossible to escape combat. If the enemy you’re facing is faster than you and you have no tools of escape, combat is probably unavoidable. So there are plenty of situations in a classic roguelike which are simply game over because you saw a monster (likely out of depth) you had no chance of beating. It may be unlikely if the game throws lots of escape tools at you, but there’s always the chance you don’t get any of them on a given seed.
- 6y ago

jorbs_ 6y ago

a problem with this sort of analysis is that it describes what the game is like when you play it with perfect knowledge of the seed you're playing and as many resets as you want. that isn't how almost anybody plays slay the spire, so it doesn't have practical relevance to what playing the game is like. it's cool as a theoretical exercise, but the answer ultimately doesn't matter for almost any human player of the game, and isn't a relevant thing for considering how the game should be designed and balanced. if we finally brute force every option from a difficult seed two years from now and find out that you actually can't beat it in any way that's not going to change how good or enjoyable the game is for people. the more problematic thing is all the seeds where a reasonable player dies because "good" play dies. any seed you can eventually beat by retrying and taking bad cards/playing cards in bad orders until one of the reshuffles or card rewards lines up perfectly to get you past your hump is functionally problematic in all the ways that a truly unbeatable seed would be theoretically problematic. playing spire at a high level requires accepting that you run into those sorts of seeds sometimes.

aoeusnth1 6y ago
Absolutely on point. I didn’t realize jorbs read HN.