also, I’ll add that I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first iPhone was released the following year
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I should have linked in my reply, your post just excited me and I trusted my memory a bit too much at work.
Long Love the Queen
I have never made it far. But lots of statistics for the queen, time management, interpersonal and monarchial decisions. I don’t know enough about games like this to know if it’s a good one. But it entertains me through it’s breadth of content and self awareness. Though I don’t know how frustrating it would be to be successful.
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Now that’s what I’m talking about! My Hella Yuri Steam Curator also informs me I can be gay in this game, which is a crucial feature
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I agree with @sdate 's take on fighting games and my own on topic contribution to this thread is that difficult execution in fighting games is better than generous frame buffers.
When special moves are harder to execute then your opponents will also drop more combos which can allow the less skilled player space to have a turn where they otherwise wouldn’t. This is not only exciting for the newcomer but also gives the less experienced player a chance to express themselves as messily as they may.
Easier execution moves the game into a space where knowledge is the most important thing which is a less fun learning experience than playing the game.
My favorite fighting game to play casually online has been third strike. It is difficult but there are people willing to play, at a much wider variety of skill levels than expected. Special moves being hard is fun and exciting. Especially landing my first demon.
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So happy it’s interesting to you! Love showing off stuff.
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Related: I hate the idea that simplifying fighting game execution allows beginners to more easily get to “the good stuff” (strategy, mindgames).
Like you’re telling me this isn’t also the good stuff???
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(Inspired by triggering something extremely useful and very early in a Blue Prince run, that is a one-off event, then immediately drawing 12 consecutive dead end causing cards)
Further to this one: If you have a RNG driven game, you can’t ever put a weight on the scale without very solid narrative/systems justification, even once, without ruining your game.
eg. Caves of Qud - RNG is so out of control that the opening village can spawn hostile to each other and immediately murder each other. This is good
Balatro - One card that doesn’t quite work as advertised. Every bad roll I get is now tainted with “Well they’ve done it before…”. This is Bad.
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Oooh I don’t know if I have the authority to do this but…
the Angel of Elaboration calls 
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On your right shoulder, the Angel of Elaboration. On your left shoulder, the Devil of Specific Questions.
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In the case of Balatro it’s easy. The Erosion Joker gives (or gave, this was multiple patches ago maybe it is changed now,) +4 multiplier for every card the total size of your deck is less than 52 . Immediately upon drawing it for the first time I thought, “This would work great with the Abandoned Deck, which starts with only 40 cards!”
My next run, I started with the Abandoned Deck and eventually drew the Erosion Joker. But now it had different rules, It was “…less than 40…”
From then on, every single bad draw in Balatro is now “Bad RNG in a game that has deliberately fucked me over at least once.”
(There are other mechanically similar jokers that use different wording)
Contrast Caves of Qud: Where my run was ruined by the starting village murdering itself. But I’ve had horrendous luck in other runs, and still remain assured that the game does not hate me because it is willing to break itself rather than be thematically inconsistent.
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So if the text read, “less than what you started with (52)”, would you still have a problem?
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No I would not.
FWIW: On the other extrame. I also dislike that they patched out one of the boss’s ability to downgrade a hand past the default points value to “level zero”.
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If one bad item description had out me off a game, I’m not sure I would have survived 90s Japanese localizations.
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These combinations are the entire point of the game in Balatro.
It’s like Dark Souls 1 if you couldn’t shoot the dragon’s tail
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This isn’t an example of weighted RNG, though. It’s a specific design choice. Weighted RNG is something like not being able to get the same result twice in a row, or not allowing a value to come up again in 3 or 4 rolls.
Edit: Sorry it’s Easter morning and I’m tired thanks to children, so I forgot to elaborate and say that weighted RNG can be good, and unnoticeable if done well. It’s because computers are inherently bad at randomness, and depending on how many numbers need to be generated, you could get the same result 5 times in a row in one run, then a different result also 5 times in a row a different run.
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Since my last reply got too many likes I have another one.
Halo 3 is the best Halo and one of the greatest games of all time. It provided both creative and social spaces for the Gamers of a certain generation and profile that was sorely lacking.
I know John Halo gets clowned for just being another space marine but what other dude bro shooter allowed for such creative expression. Theater mode, custom games and forge were artistic and creative tools for a generation of kids coming from a world of underfunded art programs and the death of third places.
Where other 360 multiplayer shooters brought you into a walled grind house film to create a community, Halo 3 gave actual ownership of the space to the young people playing.
I’m not saying I would want to hang out in that space as an adult, it was problematic and creative expression obviously did not fix our shittiness. I do think that game provided a context that broadened my personal horizons of what video gaming can be and the role of violence in games ( why is getting smashed by a garbage bin going mach 10 just as engaging as trying my best to shoot the other guys? Why is roleplaying a man eating termite deliciously wonderful?). Also it allowed us as young men to be creative, together. It’s sad to say but that was such a valuable experience. Theater mode becoming single player (and the Netflix update that took away movie theater mode) were sad losses for organically hanging out from the couch. Reflecting, Halo is the closest we had to something like Roblox, though at least in Halo the developers didn’t directly benefit from child labor.
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I see what you mean. Part of the magic of Balatro is that you can read a Joker a certain way, combine it with another effect, and it will work that way. Several Jokers benefit from using them with certain decks, like using flush-focused jokers with the Checkered Deck. So here, it’s a baffling design decision why they would build in a synergy but betray it, because that undercuts the way players are otherwise encouraged to think.
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“put a weight on the scale” is a metaphor for rigging the results. not literally weighted RNG.
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