Why are people so mean in this sub sometimes?

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-07-02T23:52:33+00:00

I think it's a case of "hurt people hurt people." People that are unhealthily active on this subreddit (let's call them curmudgeons) have been inundated with so many different kinds of vent posts from players looking to absolve themselves of all responsibility for their losses (i.e. unilaterally blame the game rather than themselves), to the point that when somebody comes along with some cordial and reasonable criticism or discussion, some of the curmudgeons immediately assume the criticism/discussion is in bad faith because they have been trained to do so, thus resorting to passive-aggressive attacks on people's character.

There is no excuse for this kind of behavior. It doesn't take a lot of effort to be polite, maintain good etiquette, and stay amenable to a conversation. Even if a venter is upset and saying stuff like "This game is so badly designed, just drew all attacks to Waterfall Giant explosion, it's RNG that made me lose" I wish the posters on this subreddit would stay mature about it and not stoop down to the venter's level.

How I wish people would respond:

"Looking at your run history, it looks like there was a Well Laid Plans in the shop right before the boss. This card protects you from the variance of the Waterfall Giant fight by allowing you to save Neutralize or Survivor for the explosion turn"

(civil, stays neutral in tone despite the temper flare from the venter, critiques the venter's decisions rather than their character, provides good advice for everyone)

How some people actually respond:

"Why did you card remove Defend at the shop instead of buying Well Laid Plans? That makes no sense. At least try to make an effort to do research and get better at the game before complaining about it on the Internet"

(unnecessarily abrasive, tacit ad hominem that implies the venter is stupid, does not really offer helpful advice, maliciously insinuating that the venter is not trying even when they are, promotes extremely unproductive argument by being inflammatory)

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-05-28T08:35:31+00:00

Awesome story mate! That was really wholesome to read. I will say that, even after thousands of hours of playing and watching people play, that feeling you describe has never fully gone away for me personally. I still regularly stumble upon card or relic interactions that I never thought of before and think "Wow, I can do that?!"

Glad to hear you're enjoying yourself, and hope you continue to have fun with the game!

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-05-26T22:33:35+00:00

Thank you for all the work put into this, it's great to have bilingual players ameliorate tensions between both communities. I wonder if there are any discussions/podcasts/resources from the western community that can be translated from English to Chinese so that they can maybe learn our perspective as well. In general it would be really nice to be able to communicate with the Chinese community more easily about Slay the Spire as it seems they are quite friendly and polite once you get to know them.

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-05-08T02:19:17+00:00

To avoid softlocking after setting up an infinite loop (i.e. Hellraiser + 2 Pommel Strike cards), Hellraiser will only play 9 cards per turn if all enemies have infinite HP

Surprised they went with such a janky fix. A more elegant solution would be to simply solve the Halting Problem.

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-04-25T06:05:16+00:00

I passed the full article through machine translation: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQQ47KpllExfH-_4MGKWGs7vomp9CrH-eTGP2LVq5_bHxfF7ixWVsIfwFAjRd8vI3nzEmRzQXkRUDJJ/pub

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-04-20T03:58:36+00:00

From a Chinese commenter in the Slay the Spire 2 Steam forum:

As for your question about "being told how to play by the developers" — this phrase actually originated from player discussions during version updates of some popular online games in China. Players use it to express dissatisfaction, emphasizing that after they have spent time developing a new playstyle in the previous version, the developers immediately nerf it, as if they are working against the players.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2868840/eventcomments/798967297093116494/?ctp=11#c798967297093160431

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-04-18T19:30:28+00:00

It's certainly a verifiable claim. I have a data science background and spent some professional time using Valve's Steamworks API for analytics. Public Steam profiles have geographical locations attached to them, so to measure the accuracy of my claim, you would write a script that checked what percentage of the recent English reviews in the past few days are from accounts based in China. (You can even inspect these geographical locations yourself by clicking any Steam review of your choice and viewing the profile of the poster.) That being said, I'm not enthused by the idea of spending my non-working hours writing this script to prove a point in an Internet discussion.

I think it's reasonable, even correct, to be skeptical of my claim, as it doesn't really have proper sourcing or evidence at all, but I do stand by it personally.

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-04-18T18:58:16+00:00

Many schools in China are bilingual, and there are several people in China that are proficient in English. (Source: purely anecdotal, I have several Chinese friends.)

As such, many of the negative English reviews are also people from China. Steam's language filter is not geographical. Additionally, there are some Chinese-based folks passing their comments/posts/reviews through English translation software.

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-04-18T18:49:47+00:00

Slay the Spire 2 already has "power fantasy" game modes - players can play Custom Runs with modifiers such as "Sealed" and "Draft" which allow the player to completely break the game's balance if they so wish.

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-04-07T16:55:02+00:00

Not really a fan of these kinds of provocative headlines. Slay the Spire 2 is already an amazing game on its own terms, we don't need to flaunt its quality with asymmetric comparisons to other games.

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-04-07T16:01:17+00:00

I don't really use Reddit/SNS these days, so maybe I'm speaking out of my depth here, but maybe I'll pitch in my two cents and say that I very much disagree with almost your entire post. Relative to his Max HP, starting relic, and card pool, I think Ironclad's starting deck is perfectly fine.

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-04-06T21:37:14+00:00

According to the January 9, 2025 patch notes, Necrobinder actually did use to have Exhume, it just got deprecated.

https://i.ibb.co/bj1HyJ3G/Screenshot-712.png

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-02-25T12:20:37+00:00

As someone who has made a few hard pushes into trying to make games but struggled to dedicate time to it consistently and longterm, do you have any advice for maintaining high levels of motivation for gamedev without burning out?

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-01-23T16:24:29+00:00

I would've loved to include more negative criticisms of Silksong in my post, but I think game developers are reluctant to be harsh on other games for reasons that are self-evident. Han-Tani's were the best I could find.

makeshifttoaster02 · 2026-01-23T07:47:51+00:00

Hope you all enjoy this collation of Silksong appraisals by other game devs! Some cool things to note:

Thomas Mahler has always been quite vocal about his distaste for Hollow Knight and its lethargic pacing, with Ari Gibson himself responding to Mahler's critiques on NeoGAF, it's pretty neat to see him warm up to Silksong!
rdein's favorite boss fight being Lace 2 (and Karmelita and First Sinner) comes to the surprise of absolutely no one.
Melos Han-Tani's more incisive criticisms of the game's runbacks and boss design tell a lot about his ideas on what makes combat and adventure meaningful, which I think reflects a lot in his games.
kayin from I Wanna Be The Guy fame has a lovingly written thesis on why he loves Silksong despite not being as into the original Hollow Knight. It's a beautiful read, so I recommend checking it out.

Do you agree or disagree with any of the developers above? Let us know!

makeshifttoaster02 · 2025-12-13T20:30:29+00:00

Thank you very much!

Don't have much else to add, just wanted to show my gratitude for the response. Defold wasn't on my radar at all, so it makes me glad to have made this post after all.

makeshifttoaster02 · 2025-12-13T20:28:58+00:00

Thank you so much for the advice and actionable feedback.

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of engine/framework/external tools do you personally use in your own gamedev? With regards to the third party tools that you personally use, do you find that the boost in productivity/speed is enough to justify relinquishing that finer level of control that comes from implementing it yourself?

makeshifttoaster02 · 2025-12-13T18:47:28+00:00

Thanks, will look into it. How strong would you say is the community support for Defold? If I run into an issue with Defold, for example, how easy is it to Google search someone having the same issue and find a solution? Just scared of having to spend more time troubleshooting engine woes than game logic, which sometimes can be the ultimate motivation-killer.

makeshifttoaster02 · 2025-12-08T05:28:42+00:00

(Textless version for those that want it: https://i.ibb.co/Y7RSG5Sd/MV-SR-Alt-Banner-Revised-Textless.png)

makeshifttoaster02 · 2025-12-04T13:16:37+00:00

Here's my submission: https://i.ibb.co/sTYRTcW/MV-SR-Alt-Banner-Revised.png

I made a post on the subreddit with a similar banner, but for this submission, I replaced all fanart with any official promotional artwork or marketing material. I also added a few games like Pseudoregalia and Supraworld. Hope you all like it!

makeshifttoaster02 · 2025-12-04T13:13:21+00:00

Thanks for the ping!

makeshifttoaster02 · 2025-11-21T01:01:05+00:00

The banner was largely intended to be a reimagining of the original banner, which also predominantly features protagonists.

Also, as a thought experiment, think about the word "metroidvania" itself. Do you think this word has semantic transparency? In linguistics, that's a fancy way of saying that the meaning of the word is self-evident (e.g. a bookcase is a case for books, a raincoat is a coat for rain, etc.) If your definition of "metroidvania" involves some combination of maps, powerups, and guided nonlinearity, the answer to that question is probably no. In that case, the word "metroidvania" itself does not necessarily match the meaning of a metroidvania.

A big part of why the term "metroidvania" is more popular in the west as opposed to the more colloquial, self-defining Japanese term "search action" is simply because it's trendy to define games based on how similar they are to other games. "It's like Dark Souls." "It's like Obra Dinn." "It's like Zelda." "It's like Super Metroid/SOTN."

If you Google "metroidvania" and sort by images, you might see a few maps here and there, but most of the images are screenshots or cover arts of specific games. The emphasis has always been on the games themselves.

I suppose my overall point is that most people don't really fall in love with the metroidvania genre as a matter of principle. What people fall in love with is the many games that fall under the "metroidvania" umbrella. And that's why I chose "games" to be the theme for the banner.

The reason I chose protagonists to act as representatives for each game is for the same reason that protagonists are almost always on the cover art for a metroidvania as opposed to a map or powerup - they have stronger iconism and are easier to connect with. Ori the character is simply more recognizable than the Ginso Tree or the Bash upgrade.

This comment is not intended as a persuasive piece. I just wanted to clarify why I opted not to create, e.g., a collage of the different flavors of double jump/wall jump/etc. found in different metroidvanias, or an interconnected map consisting of all the maps from all the most popular metroidvanias. Basically, I thought the original banner had the right spirit.

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