Learning through Balance: Slay the Spire
I completed Act IV of Slay the Spire a few days ago after encountering the final boss a little less than 10 times. It's a great rogue-lite and what was interesting was how I learned one of the most important parts of the game. First, some context.
Slay the Spire is a rogue-lite + deck builder mashup. In combat, players start with ~20 cards in their decks and a subset of 5 is drawn from their deck every turn. Players have a mana budget each turn and each card has its own mana cost. Used and unused cards every turn are mostly returned to a pile that can be drawn from after the initial draw pile is exhausted.
At the end of most battles the player has an opportunity to choose a card from three to add to their decks. The beginner's inclination is to constantly add new cards, because most of them are pretty cool, allow combo opportunities and individually stronger than your default deck.
Deck size turns out to be critical for the player because your draw size stays the same unless you acquire special items, which means an increase in your deck size lowers the your chances of drawing cards that you want or need. E.g. The enemy could be winding up for a big attack and you draw zero defensive cards.
In general, keeping your deck size as small as possible, relevant to your build, is highly advantageous. So how does the player learn this in Slay the Spire?
The game offers card removal in some event nodes (instead of a combat node) but the implication isn't strong here -- the player may receive Curse cards in event nodes, which are almost universally bad for the player e.g. lose 2 HP at the end of the turn. The beginner player most likely believes that the card removal feature is specifically for removing Curse cards in your deck.
The biggest hint for me that a small deck size was important was when it was offered at the start of a run. More context; whenever you start a new run of Slay the Spire, a giant whale offers the players choices, like trading your starting 99 Gold to add a single Rare card.
The one choice the whale offered that stunned me was the removal of 2 cards from my deck for HP loss. I paused when I first encountered this option because the designers must know that because the player's run has not yet started, the player cannot possibly have a Curse card. So then why offer card removal? On top of that, it was a pretty steep trade to lose 1/3 of my starting HP for 2 cards.
At this point, I had to either consider the designers idiots or this offer being something important about the game. Since the game was, so far, good, it was most likely the latter. I realized then that smaller decks would allow me to more consistently draw what I needed and it was only then that I started to optimize against small deck sizes. I actively rejected card additions at the end of combat, always used card removals regardless of the presence of Curse cards and after some "grok" runs this resulted in more successful runs.
Framing this as a wider, more applicable lesson is slightly more challenging. The fact that pricing is gameplay balance is commonly understood in all games including in F2P -- in League of Legends a higher priced item in the same category is usually more powerful. In the case of Slay the Spire, it was the placement of this valuation before the game had even started that really drove the point home.
Even from a placement perspective, I suppose this sort of design is already present to some extent in games like League where pre-match Keystone choices imply what can be important to your Champion.
In any case, it was a brilliant design choice from the Slay the Spire designers and kudos to them.
Slay the Spire is a rogue-lite + deck builder mashup. In combat, players start with ~20 cards in their decks and a subset of 5 is drawn from their deck every turn. Players have a mana budget each turn and each card has its own mana cost. Used and unused cards every turn are mostly returned to a pile that can be drawn from after the initial draw pile is exhausted.
At the end of most battles the player has an opportunity to choose a card from three to add to their decks. The beginner's inclination is to constantly add new cards, because most of them are pretty cool, allow combo opportunities and individually stronger than your default deck.
Deck size turns out to be critical for the player because your draw size stays the same unless you acquire special items, which means an increase in your deck size lowers the your chances of drawing cards that you want or need. E.g. The enemy could be winding up for a big attack and you draw zero defensive cards.
In general, keeping your deck size as small as possible, relevant to your build, is highly advantageous. So how does the player learn this in Slay the Spire?
The game offers card removal in some event nodes (instead of a combat node) but the implication isn't strong here -- the player may receive Curse cards in event nodes, which are almost universally bad for the player e.g. lose 2 HP at the end of the turn. The beginner player most likely believes that the card removal feature is specifically for removing Curse cards in your deck.
The biggest hint for me that a small deck size was important was when it was offered at the start of a run. More context; whenever you start a new run of Slay the Spire, a giant whale offers the players choices, like trading your starting 99 Gold to add a single Rare card.
The one choice the whale offered that stunned me was the removal of 2 cards from my deck for HP loss. I paused when I first encountered this option because the designers must know that because the player's run has not yet started, the player cannot possibly have a Curse card. So then why offer card removal? On top of that, it was a pretty steep trade to lose 1/3 of my starting HP for 2 cards.
At this point, I had to either consider the designers idiots or this offer being something important about the game. Since the game was, so far, good, it was most likely the latter. I realized then that smaller decks would allow me to more consistently draw what I needed and it was only then that I started to optimize against small deck sizes. I actively rejected card additions at the end of combat, always used card removals regardless of the presence of Curse cards and after some "grok" runs this resulted in more successful runs.
Framing this as a wider, more applicable lesson is slightly more challenging. The fact that pricing is gameplay balance is commonly understood in all games including in F2P -- in League of Legends a higher priced item in the same category is usually more powerful. In the case of Slay the Spire, it was the placement of this valuation before the game had even started that really drove the point home.
Even from a placement perspective, I suppose this sort of design is already present to some extent in games like League where pre-match Keystone choices imply what can be important to your Champion.
In any case, it was a brilliant design choice from the Slay the Spire designers and kudos to them.
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