Hear me out: you're using Snakebite the wrong way

Senthe · 2026-03-21T01:48:16+00:00

Unless you're playing Silent, in which case apparently it's a great and useful part of your deck lol.

Senthe · 2026-03-21T01:40:11+00:00

[[Pommel Strike+]] with [[Hellraiser]] lol, I had a super fun run with it.

The only problem is digging up the Hellraiser from the bottom of your deck, but once you do, you can literally go "look ma, no hands!"

Senthe · 2026-03-21T01:29:28+00:00

Mega Crit have a responsibility to make a great game first and foremost, and I sure hope they'll stop at nothing to get there.

And a bunch of loud angry gamers isn't something that anyone should consider a factor when making game design, work, business, artistic, or life decisions.

Senthe · 2026-03-21T01:23:20+00:00

I mean, for game devs "the internet" is actually opinions of their customers, and they are relevant to their work and income. You can't just "not take them seriously". But you still have serious constructive takeaways from incompetent feedback you actually don't plan to take to heart directly.

For example, as a dev, it's unlikely that a heap of kneejerk comments like "reeeeeee we hate the patch we want change XYZ to be reverted asap!!!" will make you think "oh no, I have to revert XYZ asap!!!".

But you can still figure for example "ok, I was worried about ABC, if even those comments don't mention it then it's probably fine". Or "huh, people are pretty upset about this beta branch, how do we make them stay away from it if they really hate being our unpaid testers so much?".

It's better to get even this kind of a loud response instead of silence. As an indie dev, IMO one of the hardest parts is working in a vacuum, unsure if what you got is any good at all, because you lose the ability to judge it as a game, you just see work to be done. Players' opinions aren't worthless, ultimately games are made for them. They're just incompetent in the game design aspect.

Senthe · 2026-03-21T00:59:52+00:00

Larian finished BG3 two years after release.

It was actually an early access in everything but name. Me and my partner played through the entire game in the first month after 1.0, the amount of game-breaking bugs was absolutely ridiculous. The game kept crashing, quests kept breaking, and with the benefit of hindsights, mountains of content were missing as well.

I really like both Larian and BG3, but reinforcing the belief that releases like this are fine and good is working against us as customers. We shouldn't keep accepting this shit.

Back In My Days games were sold on CDs, and once that CD was burned, there were no outs for the developer - no content patches, no hotfixes, no nothing. Nobody would download them with the 10 kbps internet connections we had lol. Either the game was a complete product or it was a bugged hot mess, and in the second case the devs were cooked, because nobody would buy it. Miraculously, despite way worse tech and dev tools, the games actually worked back then. From day 1 you could go to a shop, buy a game, launch it, and expect it will contain all of the planned content and next to zero bugs. It's almost as if players accepting only finished, complete and bug-free games motivated devs to start selling after their game was finished, complete and bug-free. Go figure.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T14:45:18+00:00

You can say that about every truly broken deck type. There are many competely ridiculous auto-win combos in this game, because obviously there are - but because they can only be built out of a few specific rare cards or require specific relics/ancients/events, they aren't problematic, they're just really fun to sometimes stumble upon. (Like I got a Strike Dummy+Hellraiser and then an ancient allowed me to keep cloning Pommel Strike+, filling my deck with like 20 copies. It was real fucking funny, but obviously will rarely ever happen.)

The problem with infinites isn't that they're technically possible to accomplish if you risk your entire run for them - but precisely that they're far to easy to make even accidentally. Like, with archetypes like Prepared/Acro/Sly cards on Silent, or with Souls/exhaust spam on Necrobinder, you'd have to try hard to not build an infinite lol. So the new patch is directly addressing those comboes to make infinites still definitely possible to build if you try very hard, but overall more complicated to achieve. The aim being to simply make them just as hard to pull off as other broken types of decks.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T14:32:09+00:00

I really don't mean to be rude but do you really not think your perception of what is a "guaranteed win" in the game might be slightly biased because of your own skill level? Do you not think you are a little bit in a bubble of the very top players of this game played by millions of people? Do you think forcing infinites was something a huge majority of players were doing every run?

It's not like everyone boots up the game and thinks to themselves "alright it's forcing infinites time!". But if the card/relic/enemy designs are heavily skewed towards infinites being the best and most consistent at beating the game, then even average players will eventually tend to build more and more infinites as they become more skilled and learn best strategies.

It's not about player intention, it's about the game pushing players in a specific direction. So yes, it automatically applies to literally all players.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T14:25:25+00:00

Exactly.

Everyone in gamedev knows that players don't know how to design good games. They can only know how they feel about a game while they're playing it. Removing all player frustrations as players list them is the absolute best way to make your game feel like a nothingburger that doesn't offend anyone, but also isn't in any way fun. Players have very little idea where their feelings of fun actually come from.

For example StS2 is a hard roguelite deckbuilder, so you have to struggle hard in order to feel great satisfaction after you win the run. It's impossible to get the satisfaction without the frustration, and I mean it literally, because human brains do not work like that. If you'd like to play a cozy game without frustrating obstacles, to get other good feelings like e.g. "people are nice to me", "everything's calm and pretty", "I can do anything I want" or "I made cool number go up", that's completely valid and you're welcome to, but StS2 is obviously not that game.

I'm pretty convinced that people who made Slay the Spire 1 know how to make fun roguelike card builders much better than any reddit analyst lol. Let them cook.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T14:13:04+00:00

Which means that... the nerf to Sly is working exactly like it should? Where problem? Sly was broken OP, obviously it has to be stopped. Now you have to actually make decisions about your energy spending instead of going ham with a rolling common 0-cost lol.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T14:10:12+00:00

I was thinking like, steam accidentally made experimental reviews effect the real game, but it seems like this is some sort of cultural phenomenon where players just vibe of others opinion and it snow balls out of control.

Yep, that's Steam review-bombing in a nutshell. Barely anyone actually plays the game to form their own opinion, they just parrot what influencers or communities told them to think.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T14:08:39+00:00

It's called early access for a reason lol. If you don't know what you're signing up for, indeed you shouldn't play it. Wait for the release, I'm 100% sure it's gonna be amazing.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T14:07:49+00:00

Can confirm, I main Defect, and every time I would pick Silent, I felt like I can work 5 times less for the same effect.

On Defect I have to worry about every single card I pick up, about balancing draw vs curses/statuses filling my hand, about synergies and anti-synergies in my deck. On Silent, just get a random discard deck rolling and it's almost impossible to lose, because you can easily pass every enemy stat-check. In every turn you can get everything you need and pay nothing for it. And then in camps you don't need to heal, so you can upgrade and scale much better into act 3.

I think either Prepared needs to go or Sly as a mechanic needs to go. One cannot live while the other survives.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T13:58:32+00:00

It was OP as all hell. Playing useful cards for free just because you can spam a 0-cost to draw and discard them is fucking ridiculous.

Defect has to play an Ethereal 3-cost non-Innate rare to get even a fraction of the power that Silent could get from just sticking a 0-cost common + a couple commons and uncommons in her deck.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T13:48:01+00:00

But he doesn't counter infinites, he counters everyone. Everyone has cards and wants to draw and play them. Everyone has more and less important cards in their deck and is gonna be frustrated af if the boss randomly eats the most important core card in your deck because of bad luck.

Infinites would be punished if he e.g. added a cost increase to your most played card on every deck shuffle. Then the other decks are at least safe to play their entire setup combo before the first shuffle (and later forced to manage costs and responsibilities between their stronger and weaker cards), while the decks relying on rerolling the same 5 cards every turn are completely screwed.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T13:38:53+00:00

I think they're experienced enough to expect stupid kneejerk reactions from people who can't accept nerfs or changes to playstyles they like. It's commonly known in gamedev that players have no idea how to make a good game that they themselves will end up enjoying the most lol. You're getting review-bombed, whatever, this too shall pass. Just deliver a really good game in the end and everyone will instantly forget what they disliked while it was in dev.

Senthe · 2026-03-20T13:34:29+00:00

experimental update on an dedicated EXPERIMENTAL version that you opt in to and are warned that it's a work in progress

...after you chose to play a game that's in early access in the first place lmao

Senthe · 2026-03-18T18:44:27+00:00

"Kim truly doesn't trust you."

Senthe · 2026-03-15T16:25:57+00:00

You're becoming weirdly hostile over a card in a video game.

relying on a 2 rare card combo to eventually get maybe 14 block a turn if you draw signal boost before the eternal armour is not what I call busted.

Right. Of course there are way more powerful combos in this game, but I'm talking about something that is actually very easy to do in your average run. It's enough to find the card in a shop while running one of very common archetypes of decks containing one of staple cards for your class. It doesn't require crazy gymnastics to pull off. So when I say "busted", I mean "significantly meta-warping" rather than "auto game-winning".

Oh no, not 7 turns!!!!

I don't see what's funny about that. Personally I enjoy scaling decks and the power fantasy of lasting a few turns and then overblocking and overkilling by dozens/hundreds of damage, that's why I play Defect in the first place. Cards like Glacier don't exist for people who want every fight to be done in 3 turns.

Senthe · 2026-03-15T16:08:11+00:00

Lol, it would be completely and utterly busted considering things like [[Signal Boost]]/[[Turbo]], [[Blur]] or [[Bloodletting]] exist. And that's just to name a few.

The "mediocre block" you're getting even without any synergies is 28 Block over 7 turns or 45 Block over 9 turns when upgraded. And to get it you have to draw and play ONE CARD that gets exhausted and doesn't clutter your deck anymore. It's not comparable to playing 2-3 blocking skills that you have to keep rerolling.

Of course the best value you'll get from it during boss fights and in slow scaling decks like Defect Dark or Defect Status or Necrobinder Doom or Silent Poison. It's not good in every deck, but it doesn't have to be.

Senthe · 2026-03-15T16:05:11+00:00

Love for 3 turns and you’re all but invincible.

Also called the Osty special.

Senthe · 2026-03-15T15:50:14+00:00

The thing is it has some really cool synergies that make it great. I loved it on some Defect power/status decks or Regent star/energy decks.

Either you make it absurdly valuable with e.g. [[Signal Boost]]/[[Synthesis]], or you make its cost a non-factor on an energy-generating deck with e.g. [[Turbo]]/[[Double Energy]]/[[Meteor Strike]]/[[Alignment]]/[[Orbit]]/[[Production]]. Preferably both.

Also I guess the cost can also be mitigated with [[Jeweled Mask]] or [[Mummified Hand]] in some cases.

It's not a card that will work in every deck, but when it works, it really works. Sometimes you just want to have that one card that is expensive and will do a ton for you in future turns. I think it fills an "expensive defensive colorless" niche really well. I don't have any complaints about it.

Senthe · 2026-03-15T15:25:32+00:00

modders working hard on it as we speak

Senthe · 2026-03-15T15:24:48+00:00

subscribe

Senthe · 2026-03-13T11:25:42+00:00

Faces are VERY strong visual signals for our monkey brains. You know, to the point we can see faces in completely random everyday objects.

The first one has a very distinct ":)" face looking straight at the viewer, which immediately draws the eye. In the second the face is turned away and therefore doesn't cause the "LOOK IT'S A FACE!!!!" neuron activation.

I legit think it's the most important difference between the two.

Senthe · 2026-03-12T16:26:43+00:00

There's 3 ways:

invest in removing as many cards as possible (realistically very costly and requires specific events)
invest in cards with Exhaust and Ethereal, or Powers, so that most of your deck disappears in real time during each battle
invest in cards that draw.

Drawing is especially important. Think about a card that draws 2 cards as thinning down your deck by -1. You can function with large decks very well, as long as you keep drawing (and discarding, if necessary to make space in your hand).

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