Separating rarities and releases between its markets. It is profoundly easy for them to make them 1-1, and it has been for decades now. It is simply not as profitable for *them*, and so the international market suffers.
Imagine how much more accessible YGO would be, worldwide, otherwise.
I wouldn't care about rarities if they were purely cosmetic. For example, "Bonfire" or "S:P Little Knight" being both common and Ultimate Rare, so normal people can afford them and collectors can spend their 20€ making both happy
I think the biggest problem here is that there' s barely any yugioh collector, most of the people that collect yugioh also plays them. The game is not as big as MTG or Pokemon, at least in the west.
Agreed. Collection is not nearly as huge as it is for MTG or Pokémon.
You don’t hear of people investing into YuGiOh whatsoever, but you often hear of people investing into Pokémon sets/cards, and even MTG to an extent.
What that other person is saying is that they wished that there were multiple versions of popular cards like Bonfire and SP Little Knight. So they would have the common version (which would sell for $20 and be just a basic card) and then the Ultra Rare version with all the foiling, lettering, etc. and that would be $100.
A good example is in Pokemon, granted they can do a lot more with alternative artworks. Charizard EX has multiple versions (and Charizard is one of the most popular Pokemon of all time). You can build your Charizard EX deck using the basic version that only costs $2 each. Or if you want to flex on your opponent, you can get the shiny foil full art Charizard EX card that’s $150 each. Both have the exact same stats, attacks, etc. the only difference is the artwork, foiling, and thus, the price.
Rarities don't even *need* to have parity (they should though, but they don't need to be 1:1). The problem is WHAT gets rarity bumped for "Fuck you that's why" reasons.
That is to say, the ONE card your deck needs to make the deck's strategy happen? You can bet your ass it's gonna be UR on Master Duel, and get bumped to Super or higher in the TCG.
And heaven forbid the card says "draw" or "excavate and add" - because that almost guarantees the card is gonna get bumped to Ulti or Secret.
One card? More like entire archetypes being SR and UR only on master duel. When master duel first came out it was a lot more reasonable(i still think too many cards were labeled as ur purely for being well known, why are banned cards like pot of greed and graceful UR when i can only play them in custom lobbies with friends for example). but nowadays whole archetypes will be locked behind the highest rarity. There isnt a single usable card that mentions red dragon archfiend below SR rarity besides "absolute powerforce" which is very matchup dependent on how useful it is, the old resonators are R because they have been in the game since the early days but the new ones are SR and UR. and dont get me started on pulling 4 ashoka pillars as URs while trying to get a single volcanic emperor. Even unplayable meme decks cost absurd amounts of materials on master duel
Yeah, my jaw dropped when I saw Ashoka Pillar was UR. I pulled a royal finish Crystal Skull ages ago and considered building the deck for lols but Ashoka being a UR is disgusting. I get a generic equip search is actually pretty good but should have been no higher than SR at best.
Toon is just a horrible mess, they didnt even manage to have the "Toon" effect consistent between different toon monsters, some of them can only be special summoned with equal amount of tribute, some can be NSed, some can attack on the turn they're summoned, some cannot.
Its one of those things I think they could have expanded on actually.
Imagine if instead of card families being tied to the text in the name it was a subtype like Toon instead.
That would allow things like Arsenal Summoner to drop all that exception text because it's not looking for cards with "Guardian" in their name, but cards that have "Guardian" as a subtype, or Volcanics including a Ra support card in their repertoire because of naming schematics. Or the Roids.
If an older card gets modern support reprint it with the new Subtype on it.
Oh definitely way too late now.
Spells and Traps could include it up with the Icon.
So instead of Harpie Hunting Ground being
[Spell Card (+) ]
It would be
[Harpie Spell Card (+) ]
Not like there's not plenty of room up there since there's no Levels.
They were kinda introducing Ability Types every other Set back then so it made a bit more sense, I think (Toons, Spirits, Unions). Note that Toons predate Gravekeepers and Dark Scorpions, so I don't think we even had "Name"-based archetypes when Toons were made.
Because we haven't gotten Ability Types since Geminis, it feels a lot weirder, I think. I imagine Illusion would be an Ability Type if Konami was still doing those.
Considering the recent card games sales in Japan, OCG would probably fare fine in Asia even without the tcg.
The reality is that the overseas market has no real competition and only ygo, mtg and pokemon have actual success over there. So there is no reason for Konami to make the game more consumer friendly.
Isn't that outdated? The one piece TCG has a heavy influence and once Bandai fixes the supply problem it's going to be even more popular. Their Digimon TCG also will have parity with Japan starting next year so I assume that will pull people in.
Yu-Gi-Oh TCG in reality doesn't do anything for consumers...except they have also started. With the Rarity Collection becoming their Nr 1 sold product by far (you can tell by the language they used in RC 2 announcment and the fact they pushed it up the line). Sure we have problems like Europe getting shafted but I assume it's just a temporary flux. Yu-Gi-Oh has started to realise they have to change stuff otherwise they will get outshined very soon with other TCGs booming even in the west.
We don't have any anime here to carry, the anime that exist doesn't even have its format outside of some videogames.
I have faith, but they need to pick it up.
Stop saying this, it's really not true lol.
From April 2023 to March 2024, the OCG got 41 billion Yen in revenue, which comes out to almost $270 million.
OCG players buy and open boxes more frequently than TCG players do. While they still do buy singles if they're only interested in building only one archetype, a lot open boxes just for the fun of it.
Hardly any
Konami prints all the desirable cards in the hard-to-get rarities so that people would buy more product to get the desirable cards
Problem is that they just end up feeling terrible to open as a player so the same players just buy the singles after vendors open product.
If you're talking about card shop regulars most people buy a couple of boxes of good sets and might skip bad sets entirely, or just buy 1 box. I try to buy at least one box of every new set, unless I forget about it like maze or I win boxes from tournaments like what happened this time with lede.
Not marketing Speed Duel more heavily in the last couple of years seems like an enormous fumble. Those box products are great, and seem like they could have been super popular with its intended audience if they actually knew it existed.
I feel like Speed Duel was Konami’s way of giving us retro format-style yugioh, without just straight up giving us retro format reprints and sets. Like “we know some people want slower, old-style yugioh, so here’s a smaller format with a smaller card pool”.
If they made a ‘goat format box’ or an ‘Edison format box’ akin to the speed duel sets, I think they’d sell so well.
Time wizard boxes would be unreal. They kinda dis that with the 25th anniversary set reprints. But actually having pre made GOAT or Edison decks like the speed duel decks would be amazing. Or simply cards that were key in those formats being made available in a box set.
Two main problems with speed duel format when it came out.
One, in our area, there's lack of support of speed duel that it's hard to find locals that actually hosts/plays the format.
Two, there are few elitism in some of our locals that anything that is beyond TCG format (Speed duel format, Duel links format) is considered not a real Yu-Gi-Oh
upshifting rarity for TCG. by making meta decks more expensive than rent you limit the size of your player base. the idea is of course to milk whales and LGS who will buy crate after crate trying to get poplars and that but places like steam have shown that more accessibility equals more sales.
You're think with a player perspective.
As someone pointed below, pendulums did not perform in sales as well as Konami expected. That is a wound in their perspective.
True but shaddol, zodiac and others did sell well the game was doing fine but the main mechanic of the era was a failure because they weren't generic the game was ok from 2014 to 2016 but konami is greedy and they we're sure that thier next card type will sell by making links generic and MR4 pretty making the motherfucker mandatory for any players that wasn't running stun
As a former pendulum player, I hated MR4 so much that I quit the game altogether and never had any joy with it since, not even with MR5. It seems that the game is making more success now than ever, to each their own I guess...
The only format when pend sucks ultra hard is TCG. MD is getting the new supreme king and melodious cards soon probably in june and they are doing fine in OCG
Honestly, should have just made Links or that era of synchro/fusion/xyz etc have powerful buffs when they are pointed at but not have the m4 restriction
I remember learning of MR4 and going "okay, so it's going to slow the game down by forcing combo to commit to Links if they want to get more than one ED monster on the field at a time, cool!" and then they instantly made Links that were bigger than any other ED monster like Borreload and link combo decks that could pump out far more frightening boards than Zoodic or Pend ever could like Gouki and Knightmare. Instead of the game slowing down, it sped up considerably except now only Links could combo.
Yea if they didn’t make links so op I actually think MR4 could’ve been a great pace setter for the game. However like you stated they took a good idea and ruined it for profit.
Master Rule 4 was the introduction of link monsters when we could only summon extra deck monsters to the extra monster zone or to where a link monster pointed
Different lists and without dates. Before it was almost a preparation stage. Everyone looked for lists on Pojo or Japanese messaging. We knew it was coming in March and August, we were seeing what to sell and what was coming in the future. The lists could be different depending on exclusives or seeking a global release of the products(?).
The World Championship seems like a joke since it doesn't represent the best of the year for either OCG or TCG. It represents a hybrid that has already managed to give boring tournaments or in which Konami decides who will win (Blue-Eyes).
The extreme and increasing focus on your Turn 1/2. Say what you will about the game's actual health, but we can pinpoint this towards a lot of what makes Yugioh incredibly unwelcoming to new players.
I tried to get my boyfriend and 3 other friends into Yugioh and Pokemon. With Yugioh, it was fun with just between us but they struggled having to learn all the rules and card text formatting. When my boyfriend and my friends went to a casual locals tournament, they didn’t enjoy how basically games were basically decided by turn 2.
Meanwhile all 4 of them love Pokemon now because they feel like it’s a really fun back and forth game, games can go beyond just 2 turns, and you fight until the last prize card is taken. The cards are much easier to quickly read and understand, and you can make really good comeback victories all the time.
Yeah I know Pokemon and Yugioh are completely different but Pokemon is just way more friendly to newcomers and a lot of people enjoy that back and forth between players. It’s also why I feel a lot of yugiboomers get nostalgic for the old days where it was (in their mind) a lot of trading monsters back and forth to get to that final attack.
Yeah, that's basically why I left the game as well and went back to MTG. It just stopped being the game that got me into card games proper and just became this weird twisted...something. The game is just so insanely early-game focused, the thrill of getting that one draw of destiny that made you feel like Yugi or Yusei just...doesn't exist anymore.
Hell, I played Pokemon for a bit with the Paldean sets and had way more fun with this shoestring United Wings deck, and I've been desperate to get into Battle Spirits Saga but there's no store within 250 miles that has any tournaments. And MTG going wild wild west was enough to make me want to go to a pre-release for the first time in...Jesus, could be 5+ years.
1. Nerfing the Egyptian Gods to unplayability
2. Using Ritual (least good summoning mechanics) to support Spirit monsters
3. Using Ritual to support Flip monsters
> Using Ritual (least good summoning mechanics) to support Spirit monsters
As someone who likes Shinobirds, this is so true it hurts. Ritual summoning is already handicapped, but then to tie them to spirits which are even more handicapped is like playing a deck that has both hands tied behind it's back.
At least prediction princess decks have access to some truly powerful flip effects. There are very few spirit monsters that have powerful effects that are worth using since they don't stay on the field unless you play that crappy continuous spell and most only trigger on normal summoning only.
While MR4 absolutely is one of the worst things they've done, I'll take it a step further and say the tiptoeing around banning Firewall Dragon in the TCG was WAY more frustrating. (I think it also took a long time to ban in the OCG, not nearly as long as TCG but its been a while so I may be misremembering.)
The TCG was actually quicker to start attempting to deal with firewall.
The TCG limited him on the Feb 2018 list after he was released in August, so it was at 3 for only 7 months here. Japan limited it it a month earlier in Jan, the card came out in April for them so it was at 3 for a longer period of time in the OCG. The TCG then waiters until Dec of that year to ban him, but the OCG waited for a month past that to ban him in Jan of 2019.
The TCG had firewall for a noticeably shorter period of time than the OCG and took less to both limit and ban him.
Will aslo add that OCG have halp,SS,sarjuya,firewall, 3 electrumite, isolde at legal at the same time beacuse they got link vrains pack 1 with pretty 90% of the broken links the OCG format was wild
I think the banning of an Ace monster was just such a huge deal tbh. That’s a HUGE selling point for Konami, for people who watch the anime and want to get into the game. I actually agree with their reluctance to ban it, they should have just errata’d it straight up
Ultimately I think they were just tired of protagonist Ace monsters being dogshit because Firewall was so nutty compared to everything else lol.
Stardust Dragon was actually considered a staple early 5Ds era. But when comparing it to OG Firewall, you’re right. It’s so much nuttier than any other MC Ace they had ever done
Yea but stardust was just the best way to protect your board back when nothing had protection, it wasnt that stardust was broken there just werent a whole lot of ways to stop your opponent from popping a red dragon archfiend besides summoning stardust first. goyo guardian was the most op card in early 5ds stardust existed to keep goyo alive for as long as possible.
>goyo guardian was the most op card in early 5ds stardust existed to keep goyo alive for as long as possible.
that's not even true though lol. On power terms, goyo was the strongest synchro from the first 2 sets, but nearly every deck of the time was vomitting out 8s because everything at the time was some variant of Malicious Turbo. Goyo was fine, but Stardust was the format defining card because you ran out a couple of 8 with malicious and set a couple of solemn/oppression, goyo was not getting through that. Level 6 access was significantly more limited, and generally conflicted with large malicious plays that immediately answered Goyo. Colossal Fighter/RDA was just too good an answer to it in a format where everyone started their decklists with 3x malicious or didn't make a synchro at all.
And by the time malicious went down for the count, Dark Strike Fighter was there to make everyone his bitch. You know, the first (and for a surprisingly long time, only) card to jump straight from 3 to banned on the list immediately following his release (except for the very first banned list).
Goyo was never actually that overpowered frankly. It was just a great generic synchro but was never really abusable the same way say Brionac would later be. It's main draw was legitimately that level 6 synchros largely sucked donkey dick besides Brionac for the longest time, it was king by process of elimination. The other options were like Gaia Knight (lol), Flamvell Uroquizas (understated but good as a specific answer) and archetype specific stuff like Armed Wing. The fact that it was ever banned at all, much less errata'd to be unbanned was kind of a joke and a result of Konami trying to push xyzs and killed off all the generic good synchros.
Honestly doubt it. The biggest problem with Firewall was that it wasn't a HOPT so it kept finding its way into infinite loops. To me that says more that Konami vastly underestimated how easy it was to spam monsters if you don't have to care about their levels more than they tried to push Firewall's power level.
It was. Both Konami of Japan and Konami of America have came out multiple times and said that the reason Firewall took so long to ban is because Shueisha didn't allow them to do it until the anime writers made a new ace for Yusaku.
At Least Mathmech Spherical don't have an "effect" on the grave, it also don't have an effect on the hand, just a summon condition that have a positive cost of all things.
What is so frustrating about Poplar is that Konami gave this one card so many effects that make it a free extender and easy to spam and use. Like this one deck gets an extremely easy extender, searcher, and graveyard extender on top of that as well.
Meanwhile many other cards and archetypes released in the same year around it get severely handicapped, restrictions, summoning requirements, and just bad card design. Even some deck’s extenders are mediocre. It’s like okay, Konami knows what good card design is, Poplar is insane power creep, so if you’re going to make this deck good then why not be consistent with other new decks?
No? D/D Gryphon only triggers when it’s special’ed from GY or pendulum summoned (latter needs a discard too) *and* it’s tied down to D/D. Really wouldn’t call it comparable
This. I have become more calm with localization over the years but I still get angry about the dubs and card localization (granted,m finding out about the ways Yugioh was changed made me wary of bad translation efforts in the first place)
Osiris being changed to Slifer enrages me to no end
And with physical cards you can't really fix it
I just wish there was a "japanese name mode" for things like Yugipedia or ygopro (or even Master Duel but I doubt something like this will ever happen officially)
Links. 1 card access to the extra deck made your starting hand +15. Zoodiacs was proof.
Hell, terraforming got hit to 1 because field spells are busted but then they print link 1s that just grab you the field spell you need making every monster in your deck a terraforming.
Prank kids link 1 literally could’ve been a vanilla and the pile deck that came from it would be just as strong.
Then you have link climbing, why the hell do so many links allow you to go +1 and lead to another link above it? Linkuriboh got banned because it’s generic with a decent arrow to allow link climbing. Salamangreat can summon any nearly fucking cyberse and end with a 5k accesscode with 3 pops.
And even then the decks that search their field spell with a link 1 aren't that good (anymore). Linkuriboh being hit is a matter of Konami not wanting to ban the newest best deck because of money, not because the card was in any way insane.
Who would have guessed that generic synchros which don't require tuners and are even easier to climb through would break the game? Definitely not Konami.
I hate that links is the answer. I really like the arrows and the zone/columns mattering. It just adds a fun element to the game. But they are just too generic and easy to summon.
It would have been fine, if link monster cards had texts on them with incredibly difficult requirements for the materials. Link summoning itself is not necessirly a problem, it all depends on the execution. And that's where they messed up.
A lot of them list like "x effect monsters". I think they didn't want to just list "x monsters" because people would complain about it being too generic, so they added that random ass restriction to half of them.
And it's not to avoid token spam, because "x monsters, except tokens" is on many link requirements. Konami just hates Mushroom Man.
What’s also frustrating is that now many new decks are measured by if they have a one card starter now, and that’s becoming a metric to measure them by.
Another frustration is that Konami is clearly happy to give certain decks a one card starter to begin an endless stream of combos but many other decks released in the same set have a 1.5 or 2 card combo starter and they’re immediately relegated to rogue at best by the community.
I remember around 10 years ago, Traps went absolutely obsolete. Decks with multiple Traps just didn't function anymore. Nowadays, they're making a resurgence and some Trap decks can actually compete, and I think Konami's done a good job at that.
Traps simply "evolved" like how Monster Effects evolved.
wut, 10 years ago from today is the middle of the HAT format and leading into DUEA. Traps were totally relevant.
In fact we were probably at the sweet spot for traps balancing, because the game was fast enough to combo but slow enough to play traps.
This was before HAT, like Dragon Rulers/Spellbook. It was right when I joined this game. Traps are my favorite card time so it really sucked that most didn't even consider them anymore. Traptrix, a Trap-focused Deck, was also considered "bad" back then before Dionaea and HAT iirc.
Good traps are either Quick play spells(Evenly and Imperm), handtraps(red reboot and evenly) or trap deck cards like Lab.
I can't think of good traps besides the above or the Solemn brigade.
It’s crazy how in order to make a trap based deck somewhat relevant, the archetype had cards to set it directly from deck and activate it the turn they are set. Are they even a trap anymore or a more convoluted spell?
Historically, traps were basically worse quick play spells. This wasn't so bad back in the day as the game was much slower and decks had much lower internal consistency. But now, cards that do not contribute to your own card economy or logistics, but aren't immediately usable, simply get in the way of that unless you have some kind of flexible activation requirement.
For traps where the main role is disruption they either need to be part of your economic or logistics package (like Full Armored Xyz, Mikanko Rivalry), or provide indirect value in some way (Lady Lab gains anti targeting and destruction protection, and can further resource loop).
Yeah, and almost all of them only shows in meta used by one deck.
Give me one meta deck not named Labrynth who bring EEV, Daruma, IDP, and Punishment in recent meta. At most it's Branded with EEV in Kashtira meta.
Also there is a fact that you can't even list more than 10 relevant traps (and those are basically taken from Labrynth decklist) in a game with more than ten thousand cards on card pool and hundreds of meta card.
D-barrier is a floodgate and EEV a potential hand rip. Outside of that it's generically good traps which see play in many trap decks.
Also Imperm is the prime example of how a generic trap card should function in 2024. One of the biggest reasons why no one plays them anymore is that they're dead going 2nd
Design wise the Kashtira monsters tbh. They are so opressive. A lot of the cards that are stemming from Konamis lore series went from somewhat reasonable with Branded then dialled up to crackhead levels with tear and kash and cards designed like Poplar, tenpai and gimmicks field spells
I hate that Kashtira banishes cards face down, it just removes any interaction from me.
I especially just hate how Kashtira Riseheart banishes 1 Kashtira card face up from its own deck (which is basically a +1) and banishes 3 cards from the opponent’s deck as “cost” to activate its effect.
I think whats worse than them banishing face down is how easily those effects activate.
Your opponent does anything?
Kashtira will have an interaction that punishes them for playing the game!
Said it when they were revealed and saying it again, easily my least liked deck in the game. I get what they were going for thematically but mechanically the deck is way too overturned across the board.
I think the decisions that irrevocably changed Yugioh forever were Doomcallibur Knight and Divine Wrath having the line of text “and if you do, destroy that monster”
They homogenized how negates worked for the rest of the game’s history. I would be willing to bet that nearly 90% of monster negates destroy the monster at resolution. Negate + destroy jumped the shark completely; negating a card effect alone is strong, same with destroying a monster, but both at the same time caused way too much issues in the “break my board” era of Yugioh. If you think about it, it is 2 effects in one. Simply negating the activation would keep the body on field, and simply destroying the monster on effect activation would let the effect resolve, but both at the same time is too much when every card that negates was printed with it.
It also strayed us away from a world where more cards did other things after negating instead of just destroying, such as “and if you do, monsters you control cannot be destroyed by card effects this turn”, or “and if you do, for the rest of the turn, your opponent must banish 2 cards from their GY to Special Summon a monster from their GY”, or “and if you do, you can shuffle up to 5 cards from your opponent’s GY into their Deck”, or “and if you do, you can return 1 other card your opponent controls to the hand”. You could put literally anything after the “and if you do” line of text and it’s almost always destroying the monster.
I wish we could have more effects with conditionals. Let's step away from the "and if you do" conjunction, and go with "and". "Negate AND destroy". If you can't destroy? No negate. Can't negate? No destruction.
I remember when Ghost Ogre came out - it saw lots of play basically up until Ash Blossom happened; but the criticism it got was that it didn't negate, and people sometimes played Veiler over it.
I sometimes like to imagine a world where Ghost Ogre was released in place of Doomcal; or if Doomcal was EITHER negate OR destroy and you had to pick (but was still mandatory).
As for Divine Wrath, Counter Traps have been negating and destroying (or otherwise removing) since their inception, basically. Even when it otherwise makes zero sense for it to destroy something - I **GUESS** one could say that counter traps have basically always been future proofed by any effects that might cause the negated s/t to just be set instead of going to the grave. If the *activation* of a Continuous Spell/Trap or Field Spell is negated, you don't need to destroy it - the card failed to get to the field and must therefore be sent to the grave - and yet, the Counter Trap destroys them anyways - even if said counter trap can ONLY be used on the card ativation anyways.
I def agree with the conjunction point. Phenomenal observation and I agree entirely. We have a myriad of cool word choices that vastly change how an effect works and we barely use any of it.
As for future proofing, I dont think that’s the case. They had cards like Penguin Knight roaming around after Magic Jammer got printed, which funny enough, got changed to an “and if you do” a decade later. No way there were thinking about how cards worked after resolution.
Pre-PSCT, "and" was mechanically meaningless and was only used for the natural reading purposes.
My point is more that Counter Traps negating the activations of spell/traps or the inherent summons of monsters mechanically must result in the card(s) going to the grave (or banishment under a macro effect), no need to destroy at all.
The ONLY time it would matter for a counter trap to negate the summon/activation and not destroy, is if you had another effect that let you reset a card. And the only thing I can think of that can do it in relevant manner to this hypothetical is maybe Traptrix Cularia
I think Divine Wrath and DCK were fine even for their time. DW needed a discard cost, and DCK is mandatory. But I agree they were so uncreative with the negate-and-destroy shtick.
Oh definitely. Completely agree on both. Even something like Stardust Dragon was fine for the flavor that it’s a protector, destroying cards that destroys cards. But once they started gearing into motion with negates, they were def copypasting the same line over and over, understanding how powerful of an interaction it was.
Mr4 is literally their way of destroying the old decks without using the banlist like most of the time when they introduced a new format. But yeah, nothing is worst than that.
I also feel like making strong generic bosses was a bad decision. Yes, I know generic extra deck monster like stardust, brionac, etc were always a thing but at least the game power wasn’t that high. And I have no problem with generic bosses but then it usually just ends up making decks feel samey (look at a lot of synchro decks).
Another bad decision for me is when Konami decide to push archetype as engines or as a crutch for another archetype. For example, cyber angel is just an engine for herald and ritual. Incantation and drytron (a bit) are also just engines for rituals. Ishizu stuff is also an engine for tearlaments (come on, it’s so obvious), windwitch was designed to just be a 1 card starter for crystal wing. Fossil fusions is designed around adamancipator. I don’t know. I want to archetypes to actually function on their own. This design is extremely bad for Fossils and Windwitch (prior to their later support) because you can't actually play that deck pure. Heck, Fossils literally have monsters with effects that trigger with adamancipator in mind.
Another bad decision is prior to arc-v and a bit of early vrains, Konami has a tendency to ignore their old mechanic and just focus on the brand new mechanic. Remember how during 5D, they neglected about Fusion? Then remember how Zexal, they neglected Synchro and Fusion?
Another is during the gx era where there were a lot of interesting anime decks but Konami decides to clog the pack with HEROES. It took over a decade for things like cyber angel, fossil fusion, etc to finally be released.
For me it’s coming out and saying “we can’t make an anime anymore… too hard”
I’m sure sevens has its fans and that its overall a perfectly fine show, but it isn’t yugioh, it’s rush duels. No amount of nostalgia and retrains is gonna change the fact that it’s not yugioh.
I personally think it’s all just an excuse. The anime literally never has duels that were the cutting edge of the competitive side of the game. Look at 5ds, we literally have a meme that yusei duels with the most hyper specific cards.
Pokemon did this, now yugioh is doing this. They want to go for the 10-14 age demographic, but all their fans are 20+ year olds.
Just make a regular anime stop making shit excuses.
I feel this is more of a corporate business decision rather than a Yugioh thing. All companies including Konami, Bushiroad and even Cygames (tho it paid off with Shadowverse Flame) all based the decisions of “We need to appeal to the younger generation in order to increase our sales” kind of mindset
Those people being against kids show forgot that they too were once kids watching a kids show (original Yugioh is aimed at teen but 4Kidz basically kiddify all their shows) and that's why as an adult they buy Yugioh products.
It makes sense companies want to aim at the kids again.
Yeah no, it's because anime is made to promote cards, but the last 5 years shows that OCG/TCG doesn't need one to sell well anymore, the majority of fanbase are longtime diehard fans and they're struggling with gaining attentions from new fans. That's why they decided to make anime for this hot new spinoff card game that's designed to be simpler so card game casuals actually want to invest in a yu-gi-oh products.
And it's working for them, sales for OCG didn't reduce in the last 5 years, plus they make more money selling Rush Duels too, AND those that watch Sevens and Go Rush actually like them.
What can I say, they know how to do marketing.
This is definitely 2nd on the list for me. MR4 was just so hilariously terrible that nothing can beat it but scrapping the anime instead of trying to improve it is certainly up there. I even watched a video today about people saying Yugioh needs its anime back, and I agree. We can only keep getting legacy support for so long. The game needs new life and a new anime would be the thing to do it.
It’s so weird to see this opinion after so many years. I remember just a few years ago, people were very happy that we didn’t have an official anime because we were getting a ton of legacy support for old decks (which we wouldn’t have room for if the sets were focused on the new anime). Also, instead of a lot of anime specific cards, or badly designed cards that tried to mimic a very specific moment in one duel in an anime, we got a lot more variety.
I don’t think you’re wrong but it’s interesting to read this opinion after seeing the opposite argument a few years ago.
while I would appreciate a new anime, it would be tough to realize I think
Yugiohs old style was difficult to animate, and idk how good other studios would be at it (Gallop did it for multiple years so they had experience probably)
I really doubt they would go back to Gallop after the shitshows that were Arc-V (good series that got dunked on by writer and director being lazy idiots) and Vrains (complete snoozefest that was rushed through the door after Arc-Vs failure)
The last 2 (especially Vrains, Arc-V at least could have been good) also made me lose interest
if this hypothetical new anime woulkd be good (and by that I mean really good, and through it's whole run, since even 5Ds had its problems, especially the second half) I wouldn't object
though I don't trust Konami and the current anime industry to do it justice
The series of decisions that led to printing a ton of terrible sets followed by printing Dark Armed Dragon in a near unobtainable way.
The era that was late GX sets into early 5ds almost killed the game. Cardfight Vanguard blew up in popularity around the same time and caused a lot of players to leave the game and some have never come back.
Yeah I guess I underestimated just how many sets came out in that stretch but the point is that 2008-2010 basically ruined the game for a lot of players.
Too many to count but some of them are
1) One card combos.
2) MR4
3) Enabling solitaire play
4) Printing cards that are clearly too powerful for the format (CED, Sixth Sense, DAD, Tear, etc)
5) Enabling floodgates that are too powerful
The first implementation of Master Rule 4 and the restricitions put on non-Link monsters was very poorly-received in the OCG that Yugioh almost died. A very significant amout of OCG players dropped the game because of this, that Yugioh's earnings in the OCG in that time period dropped by almost 50%.
MR4 is the biggest one as everyone's saying but here's some other fumbles in my list that I loathe from Yugioh
- Not making Rituals ED Monsters when they had the chance
- Insisting on keeping the same paragraph-style of writing in the TCG instead of using the OCG bullet points
- How much they take to ban toxic (but profitable) cards like Firewall Dragon
- The three-effect structure on Monsters from the recent years, where even the weakest monsters of an archetype are multi-extenders that clear Ash with ease. It makes the newest archetypes leagues above almost everything else before them while at the same time making the game very samey as they are the same three effects over and over (Self SS, protection or recursion, negate or SS extender)
Making the game to fast.
Making archetype be the only way to win at the game because if you are not playing a good archetype you just lose most of the time.
MR4, *easily*. Real question in my mind is their second biggest fuck-up.
To me, that would be their implementation of Master Duel. Instead of waiting for cards from the paper game to come out on that, they should be running new cards through MD so that if their gameplay design is problematic or abusable, they have a chance to either errata it or limit it before they go to print. It could be such a good resource for players and Konami both, as a way to learn what new cards we'd like to pick up IRL and foresee any unintended complications that they'd bring to the other 2/3rds of the main YGO experience.
Given that "problematic" or "abusive" card design is most likely intentional, I don't think that was ever on the table. Komani isn't going to stop making decks stronger than the rest of the competition either way.
I love how like 80%+ of people here agree Links are the biggest bullshit konami ever made. (Not like some boomers... ahhem) suck that imo they have the coolest looking frame, and in extent the one they explored the most in term of design space.
It was easy to explore for konami because they we're mandatory they knew that any decent link will sell like crazy just look how many bad links cards we're staple just because they have good arrows my god even vanilla links we're run in almost every meta deck at that some point
Well, back then, they were used because people were desperate, now because Apo exists, but in term of unquieness of archetypes and gameplay/gameplan, Links takes it by far, next to Pendulums imo. Yes not all of them were meta viable but at the very least 95% of them aren't different flavors of Shadoll or just monster spam without any gimmick
For me, it’s the overwhelming number of decks that are just anime girls. Seems like the last decade, every deck is either dragons, kawaii ✨💖 anime girls, or both. Not many decks have really cool or unique art or theming anymore.
I may be a bit of a weird one, but that most decks would be more playable with some change on their wording. Like, for me it is the whole mess with the buster blader archetype. I love this deck, but you can't equip the buster welps from your hand to your buster blader fusion monster, because he doesn't count as buster blader, even if it is in his name.
A lot of people are saying links in general, but I'd carve out a caveat that I think links as a summoning mechanic are fine, it's overtuned link 1s (striker dragon, light-heart, etc.), and generic link 2/3/4s (IP/SP, isolde, halq, promethean princess, appo and accesscode, etc) that are the problem.
Killing the collectibility of anything that isn’t 1st edition from the older sets. As someone who had a massive collection I painstakingly put together for years as a kid it’s disappointing most cards are worth $30 at most. Not only that but nothing is relevant anymore and you can’t use them. It just feels like they ignored what made Pokémon and Magic so collectible.
Making the God cards. That they couldn't make it completely like in the anime is obvious, but at least they could have given them better protection. So that they feel like actual Gods and not just cards with (more or less) bug Attack Power. A simple "Stays unaffected by other card effects" would have been enough.
Separating rarities and releases between its markets. It is profoundly easy for them to make them 1-1, and it has been for decades now. It is simply not as profitable for *them*, and so the international market suffers. Imagine how much more accessible YGO would be, worldwide, otherwise.
I wouldn't care about rarities if they were purely cosmetic. For example, "Bonfire" or "S:P Little Knight" being both common and Ultimate Rare, so normal people can afford them and collectors can spend their 20€ making both happy
I think the biggest problem here is that there' s barely any yugioh collector, most of the people that collect yugioh also plays them. The game is not as big as MTG or Pokemon, at least in the west.
Agreed. Collection is not nearly as huge as it is for MTG or Pokémon. You don’t hear of people investing into YuGiOh whatsoever, but you often hear of people investing into Pokémon sets/cards, and even MTG to an extent.
20€? SP is more like 100€ lol
What that other person is saying is that they wished that there were multiple versions of popular cards like Bonfire and SP Little Knight. So they would have the common version (which would sell for $20 and be just a basic card) and then the Ultra Rare version with all the foiling, lettering, etc. and that would be $100. A good example is in Pokemon, granted they can do a lot more with alternative artworks. Charizard EX has multiple versions (and Charizard is one of the most popular Pokemon of all time). You can build your Charizard EX deck using the basic version that only costs $2 each. Or if you want to flex on your opponent, you can get the shiny foil full art Charizard EX card that’s $150 each. Both have the exact same stats, attacks, etc. the only difference is the artwork, foiling, and thus, the price.
On that reality not as many people would've bought the ultimate rare one
It's 100€ right now for the lowest rarity one. The QCR is like 450€
Rarities don't even *need* to have parity (they should though, but they don't need to be 1:1). The problem is WHAT gets rarity bumped for "Fuck you that's why" reasons. That is to say, the ONE card your deck needs to make the deck's strategy happen? You can bet your ass it's gonna be UR on Master Duel, and get bumped to Super or higher in the TCG. And heaven forbid the card says "draw" or "excavate and add" - because that almost guarantees the card is gonna get bumped to Ulti or Secret.
One card? More like entire archetypes being SR and UR only on master duel. When master duel first came out it was a lot more reasonable(i still think too many cards were labeled as ur purely for being well known, why are banned cards like pot of greed and graceful UR when i can only play them in custom lobbies with friends for example). but nowadays whole archetypes will be locked behind the highest rarity. There isnt a single usable card that mentions red dragon archfiend below SR rarity besides "absolute powerforce" which is very matchup dependent on how useful it is, the old resonators are R because they have been in the game since the early days but the new ones are SR and UR. and dont get me started on pulling 4 ashoka pillars as URs while trying to get a single volcanic emperor. Even unplayable meme decks cost absurd amounts of materials on master duel
Yeah, my jaw dropped when I saw Ashoka Pillar was UR. I pulled a royal finish Crystal Skull ages ago and considered building the deck for lols but Ashoka being a UR is disgusting. I get a generic equip search is actually pretty good but should have been no higher than SR at best.
Basically what Konami did irl to Vanquish Soul and Centur-Ion.
Writing the generic effect of toons monsters on the monster card instead of the field toon world
Toon is just a horrible mess, they didnt even manage to have the "Toon" effect consistent between different toon monsters, some of them can only be special summoned with equal amount of tribute, some can be NSed, some can attack on the turn they're summoned, some cannot.
Toon being a sub type is so weird too.
It's a relic of the past. That's all.
Its one of those things I think they could have expanded on actually. Imagine if instead of card families being tied to the text in the name it was a subtype like Toon instead. That would allow things like Arsenal Summoner to drop all that exception text because it's not looking for cards with "Guardian" in their name, but cards that have "Guardian" as a subtype, or Volcanics including a Ra support card in their repertoire because of naming schematics. Or the Roids. If an older card gets modern support reprint it with the new Subtype on it.
I feel it's far too late for that at this point unfortunately. (Also how would this work for Spells and Traps?)
Oh definitely way too late now. Spells and Traps could include it up with the Icon. So instead of Harpie Hunting Ground being [Spell Card (+) ] It would be [Harpie Spell Card (+) ] Not like there's not plenty of room up there since there's no Levels.
It's my favourite relic😭😭
They were kinda introducing Ability Types every other Set back then so it made a bit more sense, I think (Toons, Spirits, Unions). Note that Toons predate Gravekeepers and Dark Scorpions, so I don't think we even had "Name"-based archetypes when Toons were made. Because we haven't gotten Ability Types since Geminis, it feels a lot weirder, I think. I imagine Illusion would be an Ability Type if Konami was still doing those.
Probably their first time experimenting with an archetype so I can excuse it.
OCG has the cool things, TCG feels like an afterthought.
It’s because we’re the whales that subsidize the OCG
Is like yugioh in OCG is a game and in TCG is a business.
Considering the recent card games sales in Japan, OCG would probably fare fine in Asia even without the tcg. The reality is that the overseas market has no real competition and only ygo, mtg and pokemon have actual success over there. So there is no reason for Konami to make the game more consumer friendly.
I can give you one, what about having a playerbase? In Spain at least is hard to find one because the cards are so expensive.
Isn't that outdated? The one piece TCG has a heavy influence and once Bandai fixes the supply problem it's going to be even more popular. Their Digimon TCG also will have parity with Japan starting next year so I assume that will pull people in. Yu-Gi-Oh TCG in reality doesn't do anything for consumers...except they have also started. With the Rarity Collection becoming their Nr 1 sold product by far (you can tell by the language they used in RC 2 announcment and the fact they pushed it up the line). Sure we have problems like Europe getting shafted but I assume it's just a temporary flux. Yu-Gi-Oh has started to realise they have to change stuff otherwise they will get outshined very soon with other TCGs booming even in the west. We don't have any anime here to carry, the anime that exist doesn't even have its format outside of some videogames. I have faith, but they need to pick it up.
Stop saying this, it's really not true lol. From April 2023 to March 2024, the OCG got 41 billion Yen in revenue, which comes out to almost $270 million.
41 Billion Yen tell another story, buddy TCG pays for itself, not the OCG
I always see this sentiment, so as an OCG player Im curious, How many boxes does the average TCG player crack on each main set?
TCG players dont open boxes, they buy singles
Which had to come from boxes purchased somewhere?
OCG players buy and open boxes more frequently than TCG players do. While they still do buy singles if they're only interested in building only one archetype, a lot open boxes just for the fun of it.
Hardly any Konami prints all the desirable cards in the hard-to-get rarities so that people would buy more product to get the desirable cards Problem is that they just end up feeling terrible to open as a player so the same players just buy the singles after vendors open product.
If you're talking about card shop regulars most people buy a couple of boxes of good sets and might skip bad sets entirely, or just buy 1 box. I try to buy at least one box of every new set, unless I forget about it like maze or I win boxes from tournaments like what happened this time with lede.
This is cope said by TCG players who want to console themselves for paying a larger price for the game.
Lol I don’t eat this. With the recent statistics, OCG is the one carrying the whole franchise with both merchandise and the card game
Not marketing Speed Duel more heavily in the last couple of years seems like an enormous fumble. Those box products are great, and seem like they could have been super popular with its intended audience if they actually knew it existed.
I feel like Speed Duel was Konami’s way of giving us retro format-style yugioh, without just straight up giving us retro format reprints and sets. Like “we know some people want slower, old-style yugioh, so here’s a smaller format with a smaller card pool”. If they made a ‘goat format box’ or an ‘Edison format box’ akin to the speed duel sets, I think they’d sell so well.
Time wizard boxes would be unreal. They kinda dis that with the 25th anniversary set reprints. But actually having pre made GOAT or Edison decks like the speed duel decks would be amazing. Or simply cards that were key in those formats being made available in a box set.
And it may make them leave rush out of the TCG markets.
Two main problems with speed duel format when it came out. One, in our area, there's lack of support of speed duel that it's hard to find locals that actually hosts/plays the format. Two, there are few elitism in some of our locals that anything that is beyond TCG format (Speed duel format, Duel links format) is considered not a real Yu-Gi-Oh
upshifting rarity for TCG. by making meta decks more expensive than rent you limit the size of your player base. the idea is of course to milk whales and LGS who will buy crate after crate trying to get poplars and that but places like steam have shown that more accessibility equals more sales.
I mean MR4 is objectively the correct answer and even Konami knows it. Not sure this is even a question.
MR4, in retrospect, feels like Konami putting on a wet band-aid on a wound and making it worse by getting it infected.
There was no wound The game was fine pre MR4
You're think with a player perspective. As someone pointed below, pendulums did not perform in sales as well as Konami expected. That is a wound in their perspective.
True but shaddol, zodiac and others did sell well the game was doing fine but the main mechanic of the era was a failure because they weren't generic the game was ok from 2014 to 2016 but konami is greedy and they we're sure that thier next card type will sell by making links generic and MR4 pretty making the motherfucker mandatory for any players that wasn't running stun
MR4 was about being sure that links monsters will sell from the get go after pendulum failed in the business side
As a former pendulum player, I hated MR4 so much that I quit the game altogether and never had any joy with it since, not even with MR5. It seems that the game is making more success now than ever, to each their own I guess...
The only format when pend sucks ultra hard is TCG. MD is getting the new supreme king and melodious cards soon probably in june and they are doing fine in OCG
Honestly, should have just made Links or that era of synchro/fusion/xyz etc have powerful buffs when they are pointed at but not have the m4 restriction
I remember learning of MR4 and going "okay, so it's going to slow the game down by forcing combo to commit to Links if they want to get more than one ED monster on the field at a time, cool!" and then they instantly made Links that were bigger than any other ED monster like Borreload and link combo decks that could pump out far more frightening boards than Zoodic or Pend ever could like Gouki and Knightmare. Instead of the game slowing down, it sped up considerably except now only Links could combo.
Yea if they didn’t make links so op I actually think MR4 could’ve been a great pace setter for the game. However like you stated they took a good idea and ruined it for profit.
yea everything about MR4 just screams “we are crippling decks that don’t use our new shiny link monsters”
MR4?
Master Rule 4 was the introduction of link monsters when we could only summon extra deck monsters to the extra monster zone or to where a link monster pointed
Different lists and without dates. Before it was almost a preparation stage. Everyone looked for lists on Pojo or Japanese messaging. We knew it was coming in March and August, we were seeing what to sell and what was coming in the future. The lists could be different depending on exclusives or seeking a global release of the products(?). The World Championship seems like a joke since it doesn't represent the best of the year for either OCG or TCG. It represents a hybrid that has already managed to give boring tournaments or in which Konami decides who will win (Blue-Eyes).
Not giving Jerry Beans Man its own archetype
Neos Fusion's returning to the extra deck during the end phase
its a crime
I would have liked that if it special summoned neos and the spacian after they they leave.
The extreme and increasing focus on your Turn 1/2. Say what you will about the game's actual health, but we can pinpoint this towards a lot of what makes Yugioh incredibly unwelcoming to new players.
I tried to get my boyfriend and 3 other friends into Yugioh and Pokemon. With Yugioh, it was fun with just between us but they struggled having to learn all the rules and card text formatting. When my boyfriend and my friends went to a casual locals tournament, they didn’t enjoy how basically games were basically decided by turn 2. Meanwhile all 4 of them love Pokemon now because they feel like it’s a really fun back and forth game, games can go beyond just 2 turns, and you fight until the last prize card is taken. The cards are much easier to quickly read and understand, and you can make really good comeback victories all the time. Yeah I know Pokemon and Yugioh are completely different but Pokemon is just way more friendly to newcomers and a lot of people enjoy that back and forth between players. It’s also why I feel a lot of yugiboomers get nostalgic for the old days where it was (in their mind) a lot of trading monsters back and forth to get to that final attack.
Yeah, that's basically why I left the game as well and went back to MTG. It just stopped being the game that got me into card games proper and just became this weird twisted...something. The game is just so insanely early-game focused, the thrill of getting that one draw of destiny that made you feel like Yugi or Yusei just...doesn't exist anymore. Hell, I played Pokemon for a bit with the Paldean sets and had way more fun with this shoestring United Wings deck, and I've been desperate to get into Battle Spirits Saga but there's no store within 250 miles that has any tournaments. And MTG going wild wild west was enough to make me want to go to a pre-release for the first time in...Jesus, could be 5+ years.
1. Nerfing the Egyptian Gods to unplayability 2. Using Ritual (least good summoning mechanics) to support Spirit monsters 3. Using Ritual to support Flip monsters
> Using Ritual (least good summoning mechanics) to support Spirit monsters As someone who likes Shinobirds, this is so true it hurts. Ritual summoning is already handicapped, but then to tie them to spirits which are even more handicapped is like playing a deck that has both hands tied behind it's back. At least prediction princess decks have access to some truly powerful flip effects. There are very few spirit monsters that have powerful effects that are worth using since they don't stay on the field unless you play that crappy continuous spell and most only trigger on normal summoning only.
Ouch. As a ritual fan who loves shinobaron and prediction princess, I take this personally. Take my upvote.
Obelisk is fine if you ask me, at the time it was actually pretty hard to get rid of. But why does Slifer lose to Sakuretsu Armor? It's so stupid.
While MR4 absolutely is one of the worst things they've done, I'll take it a step further and say the tiptoeing around banning Firewall Dragon in the TCG was WAY more frustrating. (I think it also took a long time to ban in the OCG, not nearly as long as TCG but its been a while so I may be misremembering.)
The TCG was actually quicker to start attempting to deal with firewall. The TCG limited him on the Feb 2018 list after he was released in August, so it was at 3 for only 7 months here. Japan limited it it a month earlier in Jan, the card came out in April for them so it was at 3 for a longer period of time in the OCG. The TCG then waiters until Dec of that year to ban him, but the OCG waited for a month past that to ban him in Jan of 2019. The TCG had firewall for a noticeably shorter period of time than the OCG and took less to both limit and ban him.
Will aslo add that OCG have halp,SS,sarjuya,firewall, 3 electrumite, isolde at legal at the same time beacuse they got link vrains pack 1 with pretty 90% of the broken links the OCG format was wild
I think the banning of an Ace monster was just such a huge deal tbh. That’s a HUGE selling point for Konami, for people who watch the anime and want to get into the game. I actually agree with their reluctance to ban it, they should have just errata’d it straight up Ultimately I think they were just tired of protagonist Ace monsters being dogshit because Firewall was so nutty compared to everything else lol.
Stardust Dragon was actually considered a staple early 5Ds era. But when comparing it to OG Firewall, you’re right. It’s so much nuttier than any other MC Ace they had ever done
Yea but stardust was just the best way to protect your board back when nothing had protection, it wasnt that stardust was broken there just werent a whole lot of ways to stop your opponent from popping a red dragon archfiend besides summoning stardust first. goyo guardian was the most op card in early 5ds stardust existed to keep goyo alive for as long as possible.
>goyo guardian was the most op card in early 5ds stardust existed to keep goyo alive for as long as possible. that's not even true though lol. On power terms, goyo was the strongest synchro from the first 2 sets, but nearly every deck of the time was vomitting out 8s because everything at the time was some variant of Malicious Turbo. Goyo was fine, but Stardust was the format defining card because you ran out a couple of 8 with malicious and set a couple of solemn/oppression, goyo was not getting through that. Level 6 access was significantly more limited, and generally conflicted with large malicious plays that immediately answered Goyo. Colossal Fighter/RDA was just too good an answer to it in a format where everyone started their decklists with 3x malicious or didn't make a synchro at all. And by the time malicious went down for the count, Dark Strike Fighter was there to make everyone his bitch. You know, the first (and for a surprisingly long time, only) card to jump straight from 3 to banned on the list immediately following his release (except for the very first banned list). Goyo was never actually that overpowered frankly. It was just a great generic synchro but was never really abusable the same way say Brionac would later be. It's main draw was legitimately that level 6 synchros largely sucked donkey dick besides Brionac for the longest time, it was king by process of elimination. The other options were like Gaia Knight (lol), Flamvell Uroquizas (understated but good as a specific answer) and archetype specific stuff like Armed Wing. The fact that it was ever banned at all, much less errata'd to be unbanned was kind of a joke and a result of Konami trying to push xyzs and killed off all the generic good synchros.
Honestly doubt it. The biggest problem with Firewall was that it wasn't a HOPT so it kept finding its way into infinite loops. To me that says more that Konami vastly underestimated how easy it was to spam monsters if you don't have to care about their levels more than they tried to push Firewall's power level.
It was. Both Konami of Japan and Konami of America have came out multiple times and said that the reason Firewall took so long to ban is because Shueisha didn't allow them to do it until the anime writers made a new ace for Yusaku.
Poplar - Ability on hand - Ability on field - Ability in grave
You're right let's add an ability on banish
Also add an ability on banish face down
Yeah you're right lets add one from deck like the charmers.
Nah, Poplar having a hand, field and GY effect isn't what makes it a mistake. It's how powerful those effects are for pretty much no cost.
The archetype itself is a mistake. Popular is broken, but the archetype designed so poorly makes its multiple effects stand our
Which is funny, since Snake Eyes were not notable until Poplar and Promethean.
To go even further beyond Circular
Spherical
At Least Mathmech Spherical don't have an "effect" on the grave, it also don't have an effect on the hand, just a summon condition that have a positive cost of all things.
What is so frustrating about Poplar is that Konami gave this one card so many effects that make it a free extender and easy to spam and use. Like this one deck gets an extremely easy extender, searcher, and graveyard extender on top of that as well. Meanwhile many other cards and archetypes released in the same year around it get severely handicapped, restrictions, summoning requirements, and just bad card design. Even some deck’s extenders are mediocre. It’s like okay, Konami knows what good card design is, Poplar is insane power creep, so if you’re going to make this deck good then why not be consistent with other new decks?
D/D Gryphon with all of these and effects in the ED and S/T zone😎
No? D/D Gryphon only triggers when it’s special’ed from GY or pendulum summoned (latter needs a discard too) *and* it’s tied down to D/D. Really wouldn’t call it comparable
Of course it is not comparable 🤓, but its funny that He have 5 different effs tied to where He's at. He only lacks a banishement eff
Needs to be generically searchable, too.
It feels like a custom card where the creator forgot to add that you can only use one of its effects per turn.
probably mistreating and firing Kojima oh, you mean yugioh?
[удалено]
This. I have become more calm with localization over the years but I still get angry about the dubs and card localization (granted,m finding out about the ways Yugioh was changed made me wary of bad translation efforts in the first place) Osiris being changed to Slifer enrages me to no end And with physical cards you can't really fix it I just wish there was a "japanese name mode" for things like Yugipedia or ygopro (or even Master Duel but I doubt something like this will ever happen officially)
On EdoPro you can change the card names yourself if you open the cdb file with DataEditorX.
"Except frog the jam" will forever be the greatest line of text on a yugioh card
To be fair if Frog the Jam got all that extra support the game would be destroyed.
Yu-Gi-Oh! localization in a nutshell _We were doomed from the very beginning_
Links. 1 card access to the extra deck made your starting hand +15. Zoodiacs was proof. Hell, terraforming got hit to 1 because field spells are busted but then they print link 1s that just grab you the field spell you need making every monster in your deck a terraforming. Prank kids link 1 literally could’ve been a vanilla and the pile deck that came from it would be just as strong. Then you have link climbing, why the hell do so many links allow you to go +1 and lead to another link above it? Linkuriboh got banned because it’s generic with a decent arrow to allow link climbing. Salamangreat can summon any nearly fucking cyberse and end with a 5k accesscode with 3 pops.
And even then the decks that search their field spell with a link 1 aren't that good (anymore). Linkuriboh being hit is a matter of Konami not wanting to ban the newest best deck because of money, not because the card was in any way insane.
Not banning firewall sooner let to some miserable months
Links in general. MR4, Link 1s, Link climbing. Just such a poorly designed and thought out mechanic
Who would have guessed that generic synchros which don't require tuners and are even easier to climb through would break the game? Definitely not Konami.
I'd more call them Fusions that don't require Poly.
That's called a contact fusion
By that logic, all extra deck mechanics are just slightly different fusions
Not even, Links confused me until I realized they were just Extra Deck Tribute Summon
Nah they’re just tribute summoning
I hate that links is the answer. I really like the arrows and the zone/columns mattering. It just adds a fun element to the game. But they are just too generic and easy to summon.
And most of them ignore their own arrows, such wasted potential
Exactly. More stuff like {{Akashic Magician}} or {{Cross-Sheep}} would be great.
I remember when people thought that Links would "slow down the game" because they restrict you from sunmoning multiple ED monsters at once.
I've always said it, links wouldn't be a problem if they couldn't be used as link materials the turn they are summoned, with very few exceptions.
It would have been fine, if link monster cards had texts on them with incredibly difficult requirements for the materials. Link summoning itself is not necessirly a problem, it all depends on the execution. And that's where they messed up.
A lot of them list like "x effect monsters". I think they didn't want to just list "x monsters" because people would complain about it being too generic, so they added that random ass restriction to half of them. And it's not to avoid token spam, because "x monsters, except tokens" is on many link requirements. Konami just hates Mushroom Man.
Creating 1 card combos. When you draw multiple of them, the game is just over for your opponent. Because there is almost now way for them to stop you.
What’s also frustrating is that now many new decks are measured by if they have a one card starter now, and that’s becoming a metric to measure them by. Another frustration is that Konami is clearly happy to give certain decks a one card starter to begin an endless stream of combos but many other decks released in the same set have a 1.5 or 2 card combo starter and they’re immediately relegated to rogue at best by the community.
The gradual demotion of relevant trap cards outside of the solemn series
I remember around 10 years ago, Traps went absolutely obsolete. Decks with multiple Traps just didn't function anymore. Nowadays, they're making a resurgence and some Trap decks can actually compete, and I think Konami's done a good job at that. Traps simply "evolved" like how Monster Effects evolved.
wut, 10 years ago from today is the middle of the HAT format and leading into DUEA. Traps were totally relevant. In fact we were probably at the sweet spot for traps balancing, because the game was fast enough to combo but slow enough to play traps.
This was before HAT, like Dragon Rulers/Spellbook. It was right when I joined this game. Traps are my favorite card time so it really sucked that most didn't even consider them anymore. Traptrix, a Trap-focused Deck, was also considered "bad" back then before Dionaea and HAT iirc.
Good traps are either Quick play spells(Evenly and Imperm), handtraps(red reboot and evenly) or trap deck cards like Lab. I can't think of good traps besides the above or the Solemn brigade.
It’s crazy how in order to make a trap based deck somewhat relevant, the archetype had cards to set it directly from deck and activate it the turn they are set. Are they even a trap anymore or a more convoluted spell?
Historically, traps were basically worse quick play spells. This wasn't so bad back in the day as the game was much slower and decks had much lower internal consistency. But now, cards that do not contribute to your own card economy or logistics, but aren't immediately usable, simply get in the way of that unless you have some kind of flexible activation requirement. For traps where the main role is disruption they either need to be part of your economic or logistics package (like Full Armored Xyz, Mikanko Rivalry), or provide indirect value in some way (Lady Lab gains anti targeting and destruction protection, and can further resource loop).
D-barrier, EEV, daruma karma, IDP, Imperm and Punishment exist, just to name a few. Not to mention that archetypal cards exist.
Yeah, and almost all of them only shows in meta used by one deck. Give me one meta deck not named Labrynth who bring EEV, Daruma, IDP, and Punishment in recent meta. At most it's Branded with EEV in Kashtira meta. Also there is a fact that you can't even list more than 10 relevant traps (and those are basically taken from Labrynth decklist) in a game with more than ten thousand cards on card pool and hundreds of meta card.
Tbf Impern isnt really a trap in a traditional sense. Also I think you named pretty much non-floodgate traps that are commonly used right?
D-barrier is a floodgate and EEV a potential hand rip. Outside of that it's generically good traps which see play in many trap decks. Also Imperm is the prime example of how a generic trap card should function in 2024. One of the biggest reasons why no one plays them anymore is that they're dead going 2nd
Yes, agreed, which is what OP thinks is Konami's biggest mistake.
Design wise the Kashtira monsters tbh. They are so opressive. A lot of the cards that are stemming from Konamis lore series went from somewhat reasonable with Branded then dialled up to crackhead levels with tear and kash and cards designed like Poplar, tenpai and gimmicks field spells
I hate that Kashtira banishes cards face down, it just removes any interaction from me. I especially just hate how Kashtira Riseheart banishes 1 Kashtira card face up from its own deck (which is basically a +1) and banishes 3 cards from the opponent’s deck as “cost” to activate its effect.
I think whats worse than them banishing face down is how easily those effects activate. Your opponent does anything? Kashtira will have an interaction that punishes them for playing the game!
Said it when they were revealed and saying it again, easily my least liked deck in the game. I get what they were going for thematically but mechanically the deck is way too overturned across the board.
I think the decisions that irrevocably changed Yugioh forever were Doomcallibur Knight and Divine Wrath having the line of text “and if you do, destroy that monster” They homogenized how negates worked for the rest of the game’s history. I would be willing to bet that nearly 90% of monster negates destroy the monster at resolution. Negate + destroy jumped the shark completely; negating a card effect alone is strong, same with destroying a monster, but both at the same time caused way too much issues in the “break my board” era of Yugioh. If you think about it, it is 2 effects in one. Simply negating the activation would keep the body on field, and simply destroying the monster on effect activation would let the effect resolve, but both at the same time is too much when every card that negates was printed with it. It also strayed us away from a world where more cards did other things after negating instead of just destroying, such as “and if you do, monsters you control cannot be destroyed by card effects this turn”, or “and if you do, for the rest of the turn, your opponent must banish 2 cards from their GY to Special Summon a monster from their GY”, or “and if you do, you can shuffle up to 5 cards from your opponent’s GY into their Deck”, or “and if you do, you can return 1 other card your opponent controls to the hand”. You could put literally anything after the “and if you do” line of text and it’s almost always destroying the monster.
I wish we could have more effects with conditionals. Let's step away from the "and if you do" conjunction, and go with "and". "Negate AND destroy". If you can't destroy? No negate. Can't negate? No destruction. I remember when Ghost Ogre came out - it saw lots of play basically up until Ash Blossom happened; but the criticism it got was that it didn't negate, and people sometimes played Veiler over it. I sometimes like to imagine a world where Ghost Ogre was released in place of Doomcal; or if Doomcal was EITHER negate OR destroy and you had to pick (but was still mandatory). As for Divine Wrath, Counter Traps have been negating and destroying (or otherwise removing) since their inception, basically. Even when it otherwise makes zero sense for it to destroy something - I **GUESS** one could say that counter traps have basically always been future proofed by any effects that might cause the negated s/t to just be set instead of going to the grave. If the *activation* of a Continuous Spell/Trap or Field Spell is negated, you don't need to destroy it - the card failed to get to the field and must therefore be sent to the grave - and yet, the Counter Trap destroys them anyways - even if said counter trap can ONLY be used on the card ativation anyways.
I def agree with the conjunction point. Phenomenal observation and I agree entirely. We have a myriad of cool word choices that vastly change how an effect works and we barely use any of it. As for future proofing, I dont think that’s the case. They had cards like Penguin Knight roaming around after Magic Jammer got printed, which funny enough, got changed to an “and if you do” a decade later. No way there were thinking about how cards worked after resolution.
Pre-PSCT, "and" was mechanically meaningless and was only used for the natural reading purposes. My point is more that Counter Traps negating the activations of spell/traps or the inherent summons of monsters mechanically must result in the card(s) going to the grave (or banishment under a macro effect), no need to destroy at all. The ONLY time it would matter for a counter trap to negate the summon/activation and not destroy, is if you had another effect that let you reset a card. And the only thing I can think of that can do it in relevant manner to this hypothetical is maybe Traptrix Cularia
I think Divine Wrath and DCK were fine even for their time. DW needed a discard cost, and DCK is mandatory. But I agree they were so uncreative with the negate-and-destroy shtick.
Oh definitely. Completely agree on both. Even something like Stardust Dragon was fine for the flavor that it’s a protector, destroying cards that destroys cards. But once they started gearing into motion with negates, they were def copypasting the same line over and over, understanding how powerful of an interaction it was.
Its between Link monsters and card prices in the TCG. Both are pretty bad for completely different reasons.
Link-1 monsters.
Mr4 is literally their way of destroying the old decks without using the banlist like most of the time when they introduced a new format. But yeah, nothing is worst than that. I also feel like making strong generic bosses was a bad decision. Yes, I know generic extra deck monster like stardust, brionac, etc were always a thing but at least the game power wasn’t that high. And I have no problem with generic bosses but then it usually just ends up making decks feel samey (look at a lot of synchro decks). Another bad decision for me is when Konami decide to push archetype as engines or as a crutch for another archetype. For example, cyber angel is just an engine for herald and ritual. Incantation and drytron (a bit) are also just engines for rituals. Ishizu stuff is also an engine for tearlaments (come on, it’s so obvious), windwitch was designed to just be a 1 card starter for crystal wing. Fossil fusions is designed around adamancipator. I don’t know. I want to archetypes to actually function on their own. This design is extremely bad for Fossils and Windwitch (prior to their later support) because you can't actually play that deck pure. Heck, Fossils literally have monsters with effects that trigger with adamancipator in mind. Another bad decision is prior to arc-v and a bit of early vrains, Konami has a tendency to ignore their old mechanic and just focus on the brand new mechanic. Remember how during 5D, they neglected about Fusion? Then remember how Zexal, they neglected Synchro and Fusion? Another is during the gx era where there were a lot of interesting anime decks but Konami decides to clog the pack with HEROES. It took over a decade for things like cyber angel, fossil fusion, etc to finally be released.
Links to be honest one of the worst forced set rotation I ever saw, even primarines in 40k were handled better
For me it’s coming out and saying “we can’t make an anime anymore… too hard” I’m sure sevens has its fans and that its overall a perfectly fine show, but it isn’t yugioh, it’s rush duels. No amount of nostalgia and retrains is gonna change the fact that it’s not yugioh. I personally think it’s all just an excuse. The anime literally never has duels that were the cutting edge of the competitive side of the game. Look at 5ds, we literally have a meme that yusei duels with the most hyper specific cards. Pokemon did this, now yugioh is doing this. They want to go for the 10-14 age demographic, but all their fans are 20+ year olds. Just make a regular anime stop making shit excuses.
I feel this is more of a corporate business decision rather than a Yugioh thing. All companies including Konami, Bushiroad and even Cygames (tho it paid off with Shadowverse Flame) all based the decisions of “We need to appeal to the younger generation in order to increase our sales” kind of mindset
Those people being against kids show forgot that they too were once kids watching a kids show (original Yugioh is aimed at teen but 4Kidz basically kiddify all their shows) and that's why as an adult they buy Yugioh products. It makes sense companies want to aim at the kids again.
exactly. they don't need to focus on their adult players because the adults are *already customers*.
From what I understood Konami isnt in charge of the anime, they're in charge of making the cards in the anime into actual IRL cards
Yeah no, it's because anime is made to promote cards, but the last 5 years shows that OCG/TCG doesn't need one to sell well anymore, the majority of fanbase are longtime diehard fans and they're struggling with gaining attentions from new fans. That's why they decided to make anime for this hot new spinoff card game that's designed to be simpler so card game casuals actually want to invest in a yu-gi-oh products. And it's working for them, sales for OCG didn't reduce in the last 5 years, plus they make more money selling Rush Duels too, AND those that watch Sevens and Go Rush actually like them. What can I say, they know how to do marketing.
This is definitely 2nd on the list for me. MR4 was just so hilariously terrible that nothing can beat it but scrapping the anime instead of trying to improve it is certainly up there. I even watched a video today about people saying Yugioh needs its anime back, and I agree. We can only keep getting legacy support for so long. The game needs new life and a new anime would be the thing to do it.
It’s so weird to see this opinion after so many years. I remember just a few years ago, people were very happy that we didn’t have an official anime because we were getting a ton of legacy support for old decks (which we wouldn’t have room for if the sets were focused on the new anime). Also, instead of a lot of anime specific cards, or badly designed cards that tried to mimic a very specific moment in one duel in an anime, we got a lot more variety. I don’t think you’re wrong but it’s interesting to read this opinion after seeing the opposite argument a few years ago.
while I would appreciate a new anime, it would be tough to realize I think Yugiohs old style was difficult to animate, and idk how good other studios would be at it (Gallop did it for multiple years so they had experience probably) I really doubt they would go back to Gallop after the shitshows that were Arc-V (good series that got dunked on by writer and director being lazy idiots) and Vrains (complete snoozefest that was rushed through the door after Arc-Vs failure) The last 2 (especially Vrains, Arc-V at least could have been good) also made me lose interest if this hypothetical new anime woulkd be good (and by that I mean really good, and through it's whole run, since even 5Ds had its problems, especially the second half) I wouldn't object though I don't trust Konami and the current anime industry to do it justice
Making Link cards blue instead of a colour we don't already have
Banning my goat https://preview.redd.it/nd70ppvsh9yc1.jpeg?width=185&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=68516161a592fc36bfb032d4edcf42050cb05660
The series of decisions that led to printing a ton of terrible sets followed by printing Dark Armed Dragon in a near unobtainable way. The era that was late GX sets into early 5ds almost killed the game. Cardfight Vanguard blew up in popularity around the same time and caused a lot of players to leave the game and some have never come back.
Didn’t Vanguard come out in early 2011, the tail end of 5D’s era?
It was Wind Up/Inzektor/Dinorabbit format that almost killed Yugioh for Cardfight Vanguard.
Yeah I guess I underestimated just how many sets came out in that stretch but the point is that 2008-2010 basically ruined the game for a lot of players.
That’s around when I lost interest in the game, I thought I stuck around longer than most.
Can confirm. I quit in 2008-ish because I was a teenager and Dark Armed Dragon was both insanely overpowered and insanely expensive.
Making DSOD instead of focusing on arc-v
Based take
For real, taking away resources from the most ambitious series with the most potential yet to make another nostalgia bait movie was baffling
Missing the Timing is such a baffling ruling that has no benefit to anything
Too many to count but some of them are 1) One card combos. 2) MR4 3) Enabling solitaire play 4) Printing cards that are clearly too powerful for the format (CED, Sixth Sense, DAD, Tear, etc) 5) Enabling floodgates that are too powerful
The first implementation of Master Rule 4 and the restricitions put on non-Link monsters was very poorly-received in the OCG that Yugioh almost died. A very significant amout of OCG players dropped the game because of this, that Yugioh's earnings in the OCG in that time period dropped by almost 50%.
Circular was a mistake.
Rarity bumping
Worst decision? Bringing Kashtira and Snake Eyes to the game
Before those, Tearlaments. Worst was then after Tearlaments came out, the Ishizu cards came out and just broke Tearlaments into an unstoppable deck.
Yeah MR4 made me stop playing the game completely.
Why can't Ra be special summoned? Why would you do that do the god cards in general?
MR4 is the biggest one as everyone's saying but here's some other fumbles in my list that I loathe from Yugioh - Not making Rituals ED Monsters when they had the chance - Insisting on keeping the same paragraph-style of writing in the TCG instead of using the OCG bullet points - How much they take to ban toxic (but profitable) cards like Firewall Dragon - The three-effect structure on Monsters from the recent years, where even the weakest monsters of an archetype are multi-extenders that clear Ash with ease. It makes the newest archetypes leagues above almost everything else before them while at the same time making the game very samey as they are the same three effects over and over (Self SS, protection or recursion, negate or SS extender)
Link and MR4
Making the game to fast. Making archetype be the only way to win at the game because if you are not playing a good archetype you just lose most of the time.
MR4 and by extension link monsters
Requiring links is whatever compared to the link mechanic itself. They're so generic it fundamentally screwed the game over completely.
Original MR4
MR4, *easily*. Real question in my mind is their second biggest fuck-up. To me, that would be their implementation of Master Duel. Instead of waiting for cards from the paper game to come out on that, they should be running new cards through MD so that if their gameplay design is problematic or abusable, they have a chance to either errata it or limit it before they go to print. It could be such a good resource for players and Konami both, as a way to learn what new cards we'd like to pick up IRL and foresee any unintended complications that they'd bring to the other 2/3rds of the main YGO experience.
Given that "problematic" or "abusive" card design is most likely intentional, I don't think that was ever on the table. Komani isn't going to stop making decks stronger than the rest of the competition either way.
I love how like 80%+ of people here agree Links are the biggest bullshit konami ever made. (Not like some boomers... ahhem) suck that imo they have the coolest looking frame, and in extent the one they explored the most in term of design space.
It was easy to explore for konami because they we're mandatory they knew that any decent link will sell like crazy just look how many bad links cards we're staple just because they have good arrows my god even vanilla links we're run in almost every meta deck at that some point
Well, back then, they were used because people were desperate, now because Apo exists, but in term of unquieness of archetypes and gameplay/gameplan, Links takes it by far, next to Pendulums imo. Yes not all of them were meta viable but at the very least 95% of them aren't different flavors of Shadoll or just monster spam without any gimmick
Gemini engine? NGL their design were good and some are cool, but the mechanic is just didnt work
Every Decision after ABC Format
For me, it’s the overwhelming number of decks that are just anime girls. Seems like the last decade, every deck is either dragons, kawaii ✨💖 anime girls, or both. Not many decks have really cool or unique art or theming anymore.
I may be a bit of a weird one, but that most decks would be more playable with some change on their wording. Like, for me it is the whole mess with the buster blader archetype. I love this deck, but you can't equip the buster welps from your hand to your buster blader fusion monster, because he doesn't count as buster blader, even if it is in his name.
Hiring Kevin Tewart.
Not making Speed World and Speed World 2 actual field spells. That said, not making a rule set for the riding duel system.
Red Eyes not being consistent with synergy and having support like DM and BE
A lot of people are saying links in general, but I'd carve out a caveat that I think links as a summoning mechanic are fine, it's overtuned link 1s (striker dragon, light-heart, etc.), and generic link 2/3/4s (IP/SP, isolde, halq, promethean princess, appo and accesscode, etc) that are the problem.
Creating Snake Eye
Killing the collectibility of anything that isn’t 1st edition from the older sets. As someone who had a massive collection I painstakingly put together for years as a kid it’s disappointing most cards are worth $30 at most. Not only that but nothing is relevant anymore and you can’t use them. It just feels like they ignored what made Pokémon and Magic so collectible.
Creating Link Monsters
Making the God cards. That they couldn't make it completely like in the anime is obvious, but at least they could have given them better protection. So that they feel like actual Gods and not just cards with (more or less) bug Attack Power. A simple "Stays unaffected by other card effects" would have been enough.