Avoiding Automated Strategy in Slay the Spire

Game analysis that recommends playing the deckbuilding strategy game Slay the Spire with as few external resources as possible.

0:00 Introduction
1:57 When to Seek Guidance, and When to Avoid It
5:31 Organic Strategy and Automated Strategy
9:16 Conclusion

The media clips used in this video are expressly for review commentary, academic criticism, and comparison; their inclusion falls under the purview of Fair Use and does not violate copyright.

[jamesteavery]

I've made the exact same argument about the game Factorio. It's another player vs game scenario, and people so regularly take blueprints from the internet rather than doing any of the mental work themselves, robbing themselves of the optimisation that is actually the core of the gameplay.

[jbr]

As someone with learning disabilities and memory issues, this video is absolutely spot on. Slay the Spire teaches you by letting you make each decision yourself and has much higher replayability for someone like me because it gives you that freedom of choice and experimentation without being obtuse. I'm reminded of how it felt to find information in Outer Wilds and figure out what neat tricks I could do or find with that info, but condensed finely into bite sized pieces that can be spread out over many more iterations. With its variety it's hard to run into a specific wall, because there's always another fork in the road you could have chosen differently.

[Exolvee]

The best example for this is still the Rubik's Cube imo. So many people just look up the algorithmic solutions without solving on their own even once. I'd love to know how many of those that compete in "speedrunning" the cube actually solved it on their own first.

[brewdeenmeanbeanmachine]

You're on a roll, dude. This video is awesome.

[tomorrowland]

Dang, another new video already? This is quickly becoming one of my favorite channels.

[Navelofman]

In the case of Terraria, the Guide character can show what an item can be crafted into. If any of the craftable items have "Material" in their description, you know it will be a part of another recipe. I always felt I was exploring the system by crafting materials for recipes I didn't know and using the guide to see what can be made. The other systems in Terraria I do feel like you need to look at the wiki eventually. Such as the fishing system not telling you all the factors that calculate your fishing power.

[journeration]

Yooo, Advance Wars babyyyy! I played the hell out of that game back in the day.

[Amiculi]

What's that chicken-worm-snake game at 4:09 ?

[BoatsAndJoes]

Interesting and well constructed video!

I'm against "spoiler culture" generally, usually arguing that
1) it can still be interesting to learn about something from an external source
2) spoilers rarely rob an artistic work of all value EDIT: in this case, I would say that it is difficult to apply a strategy without understanding and internalizing it in an interesting way.
3) going to great lengths to avoid spoilers can be a huge source of stress and angst, especially when unsuccessful.

I don't think anyone has ever agreed with me, but that's how I feel, haha. Am I a weird alien? Maybe I didn't go into enough works unspoiled during my formative years.

[herrabanani]

as someone with almost 500 hours on the game, i don't agree with your conclusion at all. not in the slightest. you imply that you solve the game by watching better players or looking for advice. that is simply not the case. no one has solved the game yet. if the game was solvable by just knowing which cards were best and picking them, the big streamers wouldn't keep playing it.


when i was new in this game i didn't really get it and i didn't like it very much. then i watched jorbs videos about archtypes and it started to click. he explained how it's best to play the game and how to think, he didn't just make a tierlist or something in fact he thinks that that is a very bad way to rank cards in this game.


i think what's more likely to happen to new players looking for tips and advice is that they get bad advice that is likely to hinder you. a lot of people will look up builds and tierlists and that is simply not an optimal way to play the game

[EpicFelinski]

at 1:37, wtf are you talking about? Exactly what is implied by the devs here?

[dioxideuniversal]

You say this isn't a "git gud" video, but it still amounts to gatekeeping regardless of what you say. Yes, a player can have a more rich experience with the game if they try to figure it out on their own--*given* that they have good enough critical thinking/problem solving skills for doing so to have a net outcome that is productive. But your argument doesn't seem to broker much room for for compromise, essentially stating that if a player feels a need to look up information or strategies for the game, then they are reducing the game from a magnifique full course meal to junk food. You can have your opinion on what's the best way to enjoy the game, but arguing that ways that aren't your own spoil the game is tantamount to saying that people who look for help with the game aren't good enough to fully appreciate it.

This is to speak nothing if the uneven applied comparisons to other genres, such as drumming up the overly simplistic "it's like spoiling a puzzle game" angle and maximizing the execution elements in Bindi g of Isaac while minimizing (if not flat out refusing to acknowledge) the execution elements in Slay the Spire.

[edcellwarrior]

I think you're missing the real problem: Most cards aren't good or bad in a vacuum. What cards are best for your deck, and what you need to pick to live all depends on your cards, relics, what act you're in, the upcoming boss, etc. Watching a streamer who's good only tells you how to win that run, not how to evaluate cards. So you're not "solving the puzzle", you're just being misguided.

[Spenceramaa]

I didn't have much trouble at all with StS's mechanics--it took me just a couple playthroughs to beat the game with every character and then kill the heart with each as well. I tried going on through the ascensions but got bored after a bit and left it at that.


That said, I'd probably never figured out how to do any of that were it not for thousands of hours of training through other card/deck-building games (specifically MtG, Shadowverse, Hearthstone, and even the classic card games I suppose). For those games, I'd looked up plenty of guides and found that the strategy of copying decks but learning them by playing and learning from mistakes was actually the most effective strategy for them. The joy for me initially (the first couple thousand hours) didn't come in figuring out what was good blindly, but in understanding how and why pre-established top-tier decks were top-tier, as well as improving in how I was able to control them of course. It was only after lots and lots of iteration by those methods that I was ever able to start deck building myself (the proceeding couple thousand hours).


With that in mind, I wonder how things would have gone for me playing StS had I not spent all those thousands of hours with these games in a similar vein. I honestly doubt it would have clicked at all, and I can't say how much I'd have learned about deck building itself. The game doesn't really give you opportunities to understand where things went wrong or iterate on decisions--once you're dead, you can only trace back one round. But what if your killer mistake had been a choice you'd made a couple rounds prior? A lesser-experienced player may simply never know. Additionally, the key step of not taking any cards at all (a must for most deck decisions) at certain points isn't clearly conveyed as an option to begin with. Certainly I knew I'd want to keep my deck as densely packed with synergistic cards as possible and thus eliminate any filler, but I wonder if a novice could ever make that conclusion just by playing StS alone.


To sum up, as a means of teaching about its own mechanics and certainly about deck building themes in general, I don't think StS is actually that effective. It is if you already know the genre (and is great, at that!) or are comfortable with the deeper ideas about how decks work across games, but due to the hands-off nature and the lack of ability to return to the root of an error (compounded by the save system, the heavy rng element [not really an issue for veterans of course], the presence of an inter-match economy [one could be great at all other aspects of the game, but if they're bad at this part they'll just lose and not know why], and the inter-match decision trees [the player could be excellent at learning the deck building itself but terrible at choosing encounter paths, and would get comparatively little training on the latter, meaning determining where one strayed is always a compounded problem]), I disagree that for the general player StS has either sufficient or fun enough draw in teaching new players how to play it.

[thomaspatnode]

I'm glad your strategy stat lets you beat the whole game within an hour of downloading, but that's not going to be the case for most people. Learning how strategies work at all, learning to spot synergies and how to plan for immediate needs while considering long term goals is very hard to wrap into a convenient package. You didn't put that kind of thing into your video, but the people streaming this game sure do.

In fact, you seem to recommend just trying until the player succeeds. In spite of how you started off, that's just a fancy way of saying "git gud"