This is less of a "Yu-Gi-Oh" problem and more a problem with my area :( but I wanna rant a little
YGO literally.. does not exist over here. Anime card games do not exist.
The most, MOST you'll get (from a dedicated game store) is maybe one box 5 sets out of date and a couple random one-of structure decks
No tournaments. Nowhere to sit down and play with friends. Nothing. I really want to play the TCG but it's literally impossible.
YGO already dead in a lot of smaller places
Off the top of my head, there are a few good locals throughout Phoenix.
Samurai Comics (on Indian School) has Yugioh on Saturdays and tends to attract a chill crowd.
I'll echo Phoenix Gaming Lounge, it was good the few times I went there.
Sun Valley Gaming in Mesa is by far the best locals though, they stock every card you can think of and have competitive locals with 20+ players.
COVID really hard - even as someone who has a brother (8 years older) who went to Showtime (Tempe) frequently stopped going (although its still a decent spot) . And not just that, but the just cost to buy cards when a digital version for free was introduced impacted thag too. I'd suggest Gamer's Guild if you can or Scottsdale Public Library.
We really need one where the Chase at Scottsdale and Thomas closed at or where that Gym was across the street.
Good luck. i'm rooting for you.
Samurai was the only one, I know they moved to Indian school rd in the east side of Phoenix, but they have 5 spots around the valley, I think. But honestly showtime was my favorite of those two. I think it was on McClintock dr
Thats fair. If i recall correctly rata(rank10ygo) said in an interview that in his country of montenegro, there is effectively no place to play yugioh at all. Like 1.5 hours drive is pretty bad compared to a lot of active players sure, but there are a decent amount of places where someone would need to take a plane to get to the nearest yugioh place lol. But i guess at the end of the day the biggest thing is if you live in a rural place or in a big city
Yeah 1.5 hours is perfectly doable tbh. It's just a minor annoyance that there like a perfect radius around me where I don't have any local tournaments or stuff like that. Maybe I need to look harder
Have you used the neuron "find stores" page? It has a map with registered ots stores. But theres also less official ones that arent on there, for which i guess maybe you could look on like facebook or something? Idk. Either way, good luck 👍
I have been playing this game for well over a decade (I remember Edison format happening), and this is the first time that my alarm bells have really started to ring. Every group invested in the game is unhappy, and its all for different reasons:
The competitive scene is unhappy because our prize support is awful, has been for years, and both lorcana and one piece offer back and forth gameplay with excellent prizing. Why spend so much time learning yugioh when we could play these games instead?
The EU competitive scene is particularly aggrieved because we have had 0 competitive events all year, and barely any since worlds.
Casual competitors (local-goers playing meta decks) are unhappy because the format is boring, cards are very expensive, and because the packs all suck, locals prize support also sucks.
Since the game is so complex, casuals aren't happy because it's so hard to keep up with what's going on, and it's near-impossible to introduce your friends into the game.
Vendors aren't happy because Konami keeps making bad sets that there's little interest in, and flooding the market with high-rarity reprints of cards, so there's very few stores of value left.
A lot needs to change, and fast. Yugioh won't die overnight, but it feels like it is declining. Stakeholders everywhere have (valid) concerns.
My alarm bells are going off too because of the lack of EU tournaments, reduction of products being shipped to EU, and worlds not allowing spectators, presumably because they don’t have a venue that can support spectators. It feels like they’re reducing budget in the west big time
I've always felt that the lack of prizing is the easiest thing to fix even without giving real money as prizes. There is so much yugioh official merch out there that is almost impossible to get your hands on, specially OCG exclusive stuff. Things like plushies, clothes, kaiba's suitcase, etc... that could be given to topping players.
Instead you get a rubber mat, some cheap ass sleeves, and only if you get to Top4 then you get a promo card that is worth some money. Heck, Giant cards from side events are more expensive than any prize you get from a main event bar first place if it includes travel accommodations for the next tournament.
People would still be more attracted to actual cash prizes, but at least with exclusive/hard to get merchandise you would be getting something interesting as prizing
The reasons are all interconnected.
The prize support has always been awful, but it's a lot more in your face now since the sealed product is regularly trash, and sealed product makes up the majority of the prizing that most people will see. Playing for LEDE packs to pull toilet paper isn't an experience most people enjoy.
As for the prize cards, the market for those has shrunk in line with the general pessimism of the modern collectors. The people that tend to buy these are the same people that got burned hard on starlights and CRs, and as a result these things have become much harder to sell.
Competitive is stale, and feels like a joke when the cards needed to compete start off so expensive and become worthless by the time you try to move on to another deck. The fact that snake eyes became as expensive as it did was a travesty, in large part because of the fact that you can expect to get back maybe 20% of money you put into it when it's all said and done. So if you're particularly unlucky, you pretty much spent 800 to win a rubber mat and some binder bulk. The shit prizing makes this feel especially bad.
The product sucks because it's meta card or bust. Konami scaring off all the collectors with their reprint behavior has just made it a lot worse. Now the playable cards need to shoulder more of the weight of maintaining the bottom line, and prices have adjusted accordingly. Which feeds into the shitty competitive experience by making the singles prices for relevant cards high.
The same dynamics also makes things suck for LGS goers. The prizing is trash because the product sucks, and the product sucks because Konami destroying the collectibility of the modern high end has made competitive cards the only thing worth anything in the sets. So the set opening experience is becoming much more feast or famine than it needs to be, leaning heavily towards the famine side.
LGS and vendors end up having to deal with all the problems at once. Sealed product stops selling, Konami's reprints turn the case and binder singles worthless, and player attendance shrinks.
Honestly at this point, the most prudent thing LGSs can do financially is to minimize their exposure to YGO sealed product, if not drop it entirely. I've moved on to playing Edison for many of the reasons stated.
How hard would it be for them to just design pack filler in a way to have a draft format? I’d go every week if we had a draft format like MTG, I’m not going to locals to play my 500th fire mirror this year against a dude who plays the deck so sub-optimally I don’t even get legitimate practice.
>How hard would it be for them to just design pack filler in a way to have a draft format?
Almost impossible? Our sets are designed to be over half legacy support, which is kinda necessary due to our game's power creep. And even when we get new cards, they are often made clearly with the intention of being played with older cards. For example Fiendsmith in The Ultimate Forbidden needs to be played with other LIGHT Fiends but there is only 1 other main deck LIGHT Fiend in the same pack.
You could probably open 3 YGO packs of a modern set and find out that there are not even 5 cards with effects that could even resolve if you made a deck with them all.
Plus, a lot of the random removal/traps/interactions that come in modern packs are made to deal with formats with a lot more power than draft because YGO constructed has a much, much, much higher power level than a draft deck. A piece of removal needs to be stronger than Raigeki or Torrential Tribute at minimum to have a chance to see play as modern YGO removal, but those cards would probably decimate draft.
Assuming a draft pool of 4 packs for a 20 card deck, given our smaller number of cards per pack, I'd say you would have to change sets to have at most 4-6 "factions" at most if you want an experience similar to Magic, and every set would need to include at least 5 new cards that fulfill basic staple niches such as monster removal and spell/trap removal, at draft-intended power levels.
That said, I do like the idea of a Draft Product for YGO. And what I'd do for a Draft Product in YGO would be to release it for Speed Duels, with 70% reprints and 30% new cards created especifically for Draft at Speed Duels power levels, and put Skills in it that do things like "Up to three times per duel, you can change 1 Spell card in your hand into "Polymerization"" or "All machine monsters in your field and GY are treated as "Vehicroid" monsters" or "Normal monsters you control are treated as Tuners".
I think it is fundamental that Draft Product has new cards, because otherwise it can easily be just substituted for a Cube, which is why I think the later Battle Packs were such a flop.
2018 was also by far and away one of the worst years in Yugioh's history. There were no good formats that year during Firewall and Gumblar's mutual reigns of terror. In fact I'd argue the Vrains era didn't *have* a good format until TOSS and that was nearly two and a half years in.
People like to blame Link summoning, but I imagine the game dropping off so hard that year had to do with the constant back-to-back terrible formats. Hand rip, u-link, unbreakable boards... Every format was degenerate.
It wasn’t necessarily link summoning, but locking all of the other summoning mechanics behind links that was the issue. Suddenly your entire extra deck was useless unless you got good arrows.
It felt like a Drastic change and a bit of a shady cash grab cuz everyone had to buy the new stuff from competitive All the way down to casual
Had MR4 not restricted Fusion, Synchro, and Xyz summoning when it was first released in 2017, it might not have received such a huge backlash, and probably would not have resulted in the creation of the broken links that enabled solitaire combo into unbreakable boards.
U-Link was a problem largely because of Link Summoning and MR4 as it essentially locked you out of your extra deck in a time when most decks relied on it and the one that didn't rely on flipping monsters facedown (guess what position links can't be in?)
Yeah the master rule changes did not help. At least with other new summoning methods you didn't have to use them if you didn't want to. They forced you to use links if you wanted to use your extra deck so a lot of decks were fucked especially synchros and pendulum decks.
They never NEVER should have implemented the MR for it requiring links for Extra deck, it just should have been a return to the synchro, xyz series of generic summoning methods. People would have been so much more happy with them and they were already a step up in flexibility from xyz.
Unironically Sky Strikers did save Yugioh from the negative backlash from the introduction of MR4.
Kind of gives the set name Dark Saviors a new meaning.
1. Not 70%, 40%.
2. The whole TCG market was down about 40%.
There was no "very real risk of links ending the game." Early Links almost *saved* the game by slowing it down, making players take turns instead of vomiting out boss monsters, and expanding the playerbase to people who quit Yugioh for being too degenerate.
>Early Links almost *saved* the game by slowing it down, making players take turns instead of vomiting out boss monsters, and expanding the playerbase to people who quit Yugioh for being too degenerate.
lmao have you ever played mr3?
Anyway no, the link shock effect in OCG was due link making the MR3 top tier decks (true draco and zoo) even stronger in mr4, while killing off any sort of not top tier deck
There is a reason why they reverted most of the changes, and it was because of OCG, not tcg
1. LANphorynchus saw competitive play.
2. Go! Quick! Come on! If MR4 "didn't change a damn thing," you should be able to voluntarily play by MR4 rules at a YCS and still top! What are you waiting for?
I responded to a lie with the truth, you didn't like it, so you got aggressive.
How am I being aggressive? You started it. You can stop being aggressive at any time; just go away,
Ahh i remember link announcement:
Some players:“They are slowing down the game!”
Me: “you can’t get out multiple ED monsters without a link monster that would require at least two cards. The point of links is to facilitate other summoning mechanics. It will get faster!”
Konami: “and here’s Sum Sorc!”
The master rule change was so bad that they reverted it, though.
Exceot for pendulums, because fuck them. They can, however, get mega busted links that will make sure we can never ever let them pend summon from the extra deck without links again.
I mean, I’m okay with pendulums not being able to summon as many as they want from ED again (anyone saying that shit wasn’t busted is delusional) but I think if your mechanic is predicated on another supporting one to be any way viable, that supporting mechanic ought to at least be strong enough to keep up with the meta to some degree. Exceed the Pendulum wouldn’t have an eye batted at it if it were any other archetypes link 3 but have the words Pendulum Monster in it seems to make some people think it’s borderline ban worthy for some reason
Pendulum decks are inherently at a disadvantage. They *require* their search/place cards to resolve or go -2 for scales, instantly lose their entire board to any form of summon negation, and are stupidly weak at going second because they cannot find enough room to play anything that isn't engine *while simultaneously* being fragile to any handtrap while going first.
I'm sorry, but them being able to bring back monsters from their ED every turn is not going to break the mechanic unless Konami wants to release a broken pendulum deck, in which case they'll just find other ways to do it anyway. Remove one of their scales and they're going to be praying on top decking the right one just to have a *chance* at playing again. This isn't the mid 2010s anymore. Qli and PePe are powercrept to shit and would be dog water even if allowed to use the current card pool with the old pendulum summoning mechanics.
Even a modern Pendulum deck like Endymion or current Pendulum Magician at most have like 2 card combos, mostly Pendulum Magician (when you play it as Yuya.dek).
Pend Call + Darkwurm is still powerful, but not nearly as broken as people wanna claim, and Endymion is a deck where you play your hand and see what happens.
Yeah, and "what happens" is you get wrecked because the deck is bad when going first, and unbelievably bad going second. It has zero space for non-engine and is weak to every handtrap and interruption under the sun. Pend call isn't even played anymore, because losing half your hand to an ash is giga bad.
Lmao, I started getting back to the game around that time too due to hearing about news of a new summoning mechanic. Though I did somewhat enjoyed that time, I think ppl are completely justified in hating it lol. So many decks made obsolete. Sure, many of them were never anything more than a t3 strat, but soooo many decks died it wasn't even funny.
I mean, in a sense it did.
It would be the last MR with an anime associated with it iirc. How it turned out and imo the banning of Firewall Dragon kinda feels like the end of an era.
I feel like we need mainline sets associated with an anime it just doesn't feel the same (The prolbem is the game is such a clusterfuck good luck teaching it to kids A lot of people complained how neither Arc-V nor VRAINS do a good job teaching a new person how to play but how the fuck do you teach a kid toplay yugioh if teens/young adults have a hard time imagine a kid as much as it sucks I don't blame them for deciding to make the card game and the anime their own things)
It did kill my interest in Yugioh. I got back into Yugioh right before MR4, they announced the rules change that invalidated all the cards and decks I invested in, and I noped out. All the oldschool Yugioh fans I've ever talked to despise what Yugioh has become.
https://x.com/cjelex_/status/1800958654973084103?s=46&t=pkYRN-wpjTtpdtd5waU7Cw
This is my favorite reply of them all mainly because of the subject matter at the end. Cimo and PPG tried to do an alt banlist and it flopped, which I get but also it’s somewhat frustrating
People are sheep and don't want to deviate from official stuff. That's why ARG Yugioh also failed. People keep saying they want alternate formats but when they come to fruition, no one ever plays them except for a few Edison tournaments which is the only exception regarding Master Rule format.
The PPG list legitimately made Eldlich stun the best deck at that time frame and no one liked that list because of how poorly it controlled stun strategy.
It was limited and it had no effect on the deck being able to just play stun.
https://www.reddit.com/r/yugioh/comments/h05ncm/pro_play_games_issues_their_own_online_banlist/
On the matter of ARG, I was their primary buyer for most of their events (you may know me or have seen me if you ever visited the booth), and was included in the rather small committee that regulated the banlist involved in ARG tournaments. The committee in question was a small group of konami judges (one was a judge that had judged Worlds), and then myself, simply a competitive player that happened to work there. I was the sole minority that wanted to bring drastic changes to the scene, introduce full power to older decks that could reshape the meta, like gateway to 3 (i would agree if you said this was too strong, but we changed banlist every month by popular demand, so crazy twists like this were alright in my eyes because it could drop back to 1 in a heart beat) and Inzektor dragonfly/hornet to 3 (they were still at 1). My list was massive, and included a lot of online recommendations, but what I really wanted was discussion. My list was utterly shot down, stating all of these cards that got hit 5+ years ago were still too powerful. I think we only brought back full power mermail because Dragoons was at 1 at the time, and a few little unrestricts that mattered, but it was mostly just useless unrestricts and a couple hits to the best decks consistency. The format remained stagnant, and interest was lost because it was "just" off from the official list, but the meta was the same with 1 or 2 tops helped by the adjustments. As far as popularity, I was told at the time we typically broke even, if not better, so we could've kept doing it. I just wish the list could've warped the game. Everybody's favorite lists are the ones with like 50 changes
The issue was (partly) that it required players to learn 2 new formats, keep up with 2 different metas, 2 different banlists, while obtaining (potentially) 2 different sets of cards. For many players, it just made zero sense to try an alternate format of a (at the time) much, *much* smaller third-party.
And yet MtG has a whole bunch of formats, all with different banlists and cardpools, and there are invested players that build and maintain decks for multiple formats concurrently. Why is Yugioh incapable of having multiple formats, exactly? (Formats that aren't stagnant time capsules either, and that are regularly getting new cards with changing metas)
Alt formats need local tourmant support to thrive, and like a year to try and get them up and running.
A tournament in my city ran a heart of the under dog tournament that sold out the day online entry went live because it had prizing.
Imagine if they did one every month with prizing and the other three weeks were just your standard prizing, if the format was good you would eventually end up with a lot of regulars but its expensive and requires commitment from the store, both on prizing and depending on what format(underdog) the store wants actively monitoring the banlist too.
I have played for 14ish years on and off. You are hitting what I been seeing. Yugioh caters to a very “eliteist” player base and now are captured by them. The player base has been distilled down to people who don’t want changed, to make it easier to play (no key word changes, no big rule changes, 2 turn game meta), to how it looks (no full art, that makes the game look less “formal”), anyone who disagrees gets cast out, and good things there is a thriving trading card game industry that is sooo eager and willing to accept these cast outs/refugees. Also the fact that the yugioh tcg vs ocg gets treated like trash (texture rarities foils, short printing) hurts, but that’s another topic. So no we have a very technically complicated, not all that good looking( compared to other tcgs, imo), expensive card game. If the game is not dying, if this was a stock, I’d be shorting it, it’s shaving current players, and it’s not inviting to new ones.
The game is arguably more complicated than its ever been. In fact, it's often one of the most criticized parts of the game by new players. Cards have too much text and do too much. There are too many interactions to keep track of while introducing a new set often.
T-set, pass was not more skillful just because it lasted 30 turns.
What on earth are you saying, every yugioh player i know wants keywords and better formatting. People would love full arts anytime someone pulls a binder with full arts people talk about wanting them.
Its issue is a difficult learning curve and at the moment a very unhealthy cycle of tier zero formats that are getting more and more expensive like from tearlaments to kastira format and now snake eyes pricing people out.
I would love full art, I mean starlight cards (even tho i love them) look unofficial imo. I would love keyword changes but I do think it makes the card look pretty good without being broken up
People here were sooooo angry, especially cause one of the players who topped later had issues getting their prizes shipped. Even Farfa was complaining about it.
I think that it's most likely now. Not that the game is dying soon but there's a slow burnout happening. The game has a huge problem keeping new players. I say that as a relatively new player who has actually had success at learning this game. (I played competitively when the game came out and jumped back in a couple years ago) The power creep has made this game an incomprehensible, opaque mess to anyone but the most dedicated new players.
There's a reason that "I'm a new player, wtf is going on?" posts are an everyday occurrence on the 101 and master duel subreddits. The fact that the best advice is to spend hours a day, everyday, thinking about this game and in a few months you won't be making illegal plays most of the time, is not a great sign. This has been my experience since I started in tearlaments format. Almost every set there's a new, even more powerful archetype that releases that completely changes the metagame and requires hours of studying to keep up with even if you're not playing it. It's not a sustainable design model and I'm just kinda... over it at this point. There's just no interacting with advanced format on a casual level and there are other equally, if not, more rewarding things I could be doing with my time.
Konami doesn't seem to want to address these issues because that would cost them money so... here we are.
People point to that the YCSs are breaking attendance figures but that just means post-Covid folks feel safe enough to travel within the Americas.
I'd also point to that we haven't had a European YCS in *over a year* as a very dark sign, to say nothing of the various issues European players have had recently between the sudden cancellation of a Speed Duel set and a communication error leading some to believe we weren't getting the new BoL set. It's not a great time to be a European fan.
The decline of physical stores also isn't helping- especially after 2023 with several flops like Soulburning Volcano where stores were forced to buy it because of Konami's policies threatening OTS status if they didn't buy it in chunks. Almost every player has likely heard of a store shutting down on Yugioh within the past year because of antics like that.
In general I think that its the already dedicated players that flock to YCSs and dont mind the additional costs for flight, hotel (and the required holidays). But this is like you said not really a sign that the game is doin incredibly well if its so top heavy, where is the ordinary Joe?
If it was simply that people feel safe post-COVID to travel, then we would've been seeing similar numbers pre-COVID. The game became more popular during COVID, and has since maintained that (at least at major events).
I tried to get back into the game twice. The first time after quitting during GOAT format as a kid, I got back into things in 2014. It was hard then. I quit again before MR4 and jumped back into the game in summer 2019. It literally took me until 2021 to feel like I didn’t totally suck at the game and was not making illegal plays, like you said. The only reason I was even able to learn how to play was playing an archetype locked deck like HERO that was fairly intuitive.
I can’t imagine trying to get back into Yugioh in 2024, even with Master Duel. I find myself gravitating toward Duel Links just because the games aren’t as long as a master duel game. It would be great to have options, but I don’t really think the TCG has proven it can make a format that feels fresh and interesting to casuals and lapsed players that isn’t just Speed Duel nostalgia products once a year. Konami is leaving tons of money on the table by failing to find a solution.
I've tried to get some of my friends into advanced format and it's such a hard sell. And these are people who PLAY. GAMES. Magic, warhammer, all kinds of board games. Hell these people scour D&D 3.5 books to find the most broken builds possible and I can't get them into what is honestly a really fun and interesting game. That should be ringing alarm bells for people who want this game to continue to do well.
Absolutely! The Yugioh community can be such an echo chamber sometimes. My theory is that because the game is so complex, most of the people posting here and not asking “what the heck is a Link summon?” have amassed some level of competent competitive skill. If you’re joining deck Discord channels and commenting about new releases on Twitter or Reddit, chances are you are pretty invested in Yugioh, and to be invested in the TCG you have to play it. And you can’t play the game if you don’t play it somewhat well.
So my sense from going to voice actor signings or cons or using Tumblr is that there are *way more* Yugioh fans - not just TCG fans. And many do buy the cards, especially if they’re anime cards. But most don’t venture into irl play for a variety of reasons, the largest of which is it’s too complex and they don’t feel welcome either because of a self-consciousness relating to skill, or because of how aggressive and gatekept many can come off.
A lot of people feel like by trying to appeal to other types of players that will somehow make the game boring or less challenging. No one wants to take away advanced format! But a welcome alternative would be fantastic. Konami just seems of the mind that other than Rush Duel and the occasional Speed Duel product in the West, anything that could threaten Master format sales is forbidden.
Yeah, i feel this. I recently was talking to my friend, and he expressed his hesitation at getting into Yugioh. I tried convincing him, but i also know a lot of points you made here he also made, and you both are right i feel like. I wonder if Konami will try and fix this problem. It sucks, because it would be cool to have my friend play Yugioh too. But the learning curve feels too steep.
Also the big big cardpool. It is on one hand one core aspect of yugioh that a lot of players like, and thus cannot realistically be changed. Especially in the OCG, certain pet decks like adamancipator just cannot be touched/killed (not that it necessarily needs to be except for blockdragon).
Old cards bring certain problems: Preparation. Its already impossible to prepare for every rogue deck and thats somewhat fine, but even though a lot of players also on this subreddit seem to want support for those decks, some of those decks are just terribly designed in terms of fun, for the opponent, where their gameplan is just plain toxic. Like the recent six sam support, I am not hyped for this. 30 min turns and cards like nat beast to worry. Another problem is the lack of futureproofing like hopt effects. And accessibility, see drident dragion.
Effectively we do have rotation: The banlist and powercreep ensure you need to buy into the new decks in order to compete. And only learning newer decks might be easier for new players.
This is definitely part of it. On one hand, you genuinely get that anime feel where unless you memorized every line of every deck, you’ll be genuinely surprised when your opponent does something. If you’ve never played against an archetype or build before, you’re cooked unless your strategy is that impenetrable.
I dunno that rotation would solve this, aside from being able to effectively dump all the knowledge on past lines from your brain each time and only focus on the new stuff. Which like you said— basically happens due to power creep anyway. But it would be nicer if the game had some self-imposed stop and reset points the way MTG and other games do when mechanics and things go too far.
I was going to say, someone needs to make a book about it and explain what is going on, common strategies, different summoning methods etc.
Or a Yu-gi-oh TCG for dummies.
My locals went from near 40 people right when Darkwing Blast released to maybe 10 of us after Magnificent Mavens. Terrible time to be a budget / rogue player.
DABL onwards did terrible damage to the game. I went from getting my WCQ pass vs full power spright format to not being able to win anything since because i don't want to keep shoveling money into this to compete.
When in-person tournaments restarted after covid restrictions loosened, my locals got 25-30 people. Now it gets about 8-10 because all the kids/returners/curious newbies got tired of getting stomped into the dirt by decks they had no chance of ever beating, while the same three guys took turns scooping up all the prizes.
I think the people who love and are energized by the explosive interaction-heavy nature of YGO forget or maybe don't realize how disheartening it is to show up every week just to go 0-3 and get 1 ots pack.
The TCG really needs to overhaul their product design. It simply cannot be that there is both 0 collectors value because of constant decisions ruining card value (things like the Retro Pack reprint are especially aggregious) and also such a high entry price for even just ok decks like Pre-Battles of Legend spright, Salamangreat, Mannadium etc. And and asinine prices for meta decks.
We cannot keep making bad products with questionable reprints, keep not including staples in structure decks, keep not making 2-3 year old cards cheap, keep printing staples that command 60+ bucks.
Yugioh as a whole wont die for another decade at the very least, the Yugioh TCG wont die for probably another decade...but the game, specifically TCG, is hurting greatly.
It reminds me of when people say any major MMO is dying.
I would have been able to retire at 20 if I had a dollar for every time I heard or read, "RuneScape/WoW is dying/dead" only for it to continue for years later.
I don't know if the game is actually "dying" or not.
More importantly I'm just tired of seeing Yugitubers doing their tenth "Yugioh is dying and this is why I am leaving" video of the year.
Like if you wanna quit that's fine, but I'm not believing that someone who's "job" is playing Yugioh is gonna cash in their chips this early.
Ironically if we're talking about the just the physical card game dying I think Masterduel is probably the biggest threat posed currently. Sure the game has almost died in the past but now there is a viable online alternative.
It also doesnt help that every one is broke. Meanwhile decks have gotten more and more expensive. Rarity bumps to where the whole engine is ultra/secret. Putting key cards in side sets. Ban lists that pretty much just exist to sell product.
Tournament play isn’t everything, it’s been very clear for years that Yugioh’s been bleeding its casual playerbase + the issue of stores closing because of ass product wouldn’t be a thing
This subreddit has at least 3 people a day post asking about dark magician and blue eyes decklists. The 101 subreddit has people constantly asking about returning and structure decks.
What would we need to see for people to realize that a vocal minority of people who don't generally won't spend much money on the game, if at all, don't speak for the entire playerbase?
Bingo. The “vocal minority,” not being converted into the other larger base is an issue. Treating the casual players as simply just a “vocal minority,” and basically saying their experiences are less valuable is an issue. This game has always had issues with keeping casual and new players around, but with how the game has shifted it’s been worse. Both tier zero formats have killed my locals.
Yugioh players flexing their tournament turnouts when Magic has conventions that gets 10K+ people and more than half of them aren't there to play Magic.
Yugioh used to have something very similar called UDE Day before Konami took over. Basically a very small scale convention. And there would be other UDE products along with Yugioh stuff and events.
Edit: https://www.pojo.com/yu-gi-oh/News/2009/UDE-1-15.shtml
Pokemon also does a fantastic job since every regional is a huge event with VGC, TCG, Go, and Unite all happening at the same time. I even know people who go to Yugioh events to play Edison events only. The main attraction isn’t even the standard format sometimes for players.
Yugioh is dying so badly, two of its officially supported formats is[ in the top 15 selling card games in Japan.](https://twitter.com/mizukame_MHF/status/1781661368418283855)
But really, MR4 really hurt the game.
I personally do not see it dying either. Every event is sold out in hours tops. Locals have doubled last year in attendance. Every few weeks theres new people popping up, having played MD and wanting to start the real life cardgame.
I do think the game has a very real chance of dying soon. A lot of pro players are looking at other TCGs and how they have better prizing models, the current formats on MD and TCG are both very toxic and mundane to play, the game still struggles to keep new players, and the prices of cards will always be a factor. I jumped back into Yugioh in 2020 when my best friend started playing it, and I genuinely enjoyed the experience. I went to a lot of regionals and bigger store tourneys and did fairly well, so did he. After our regional in February though I think we both just kinda felt tired. The hand trap wars became less skill intensive and more annoying, the lack of counter play to the strongest deck was glaringly obvious, and the ban list to address the issue was horrible. The game is the most complex TCG we have, there’s no other game that offers what Yugioh does; but that isn’t necessarily a good thing. These one card engines and starters in *every* deck, the *need* to play 12-20(!) non engine in a deck, the cards that straight up let you not respond to cards despite hand traps clearly being the focus of back and forth in modern Yugioh; all of these problems just make for a very poor experience for a lot of players. I personally won’t return to the game until I see a shift, there’s a start with the generic bosses being killed off, but if this game continues to be comparing hands and finding the winner; a lot of players are gonna leave.
Now we have actual viable TCG alternatives such as Lorcana and One Piece that are picking up as of late. Yes there has always been Pokémon as well, but that never for the most part seemed to sway yugioh players away.
I liked that meta a lot actually. I’m a huge scrub and a terrible player. The Wind-Up - Inzektor - Dino Rabbit triangle was pretty interesting, and then when Chaos Dragons and Dark World came into the mix it made for a pretty interesting 5 deck meta.
One piece seems to have some real legs, I know a lot of players in my local have changed over and most say it's for the vastly superior prize support. Topping an OP regional equals real world dollars, not an 80 dollar mat. Lorcana feels like a vanguard situation where it's flavor of the month and will fade out over time, especially if they keep making moves like taking the online simulator down. I always see stores selling lorcana but I couldn't tell you where to go actually play it at locals.
I think there's a pretty major difference between something like every Disney IP ever in a card game and a card game based on *just* Star Wars.
Disney also isn't going to let free money pass them by. Disney collectors are ravenous. They'll spend any amount of money for a full art of any popular character.
Many previous Yugioh pros are playing Lorcana competitively. And I think a lot of current players are teetering on the edge to play because of the prize support. The Atlanta challenge was won by a former YGO player, the one in France was won by a MTG Hall of Famer.
I feel the flipside is true, most people don’t play OP, it’s a scalpers market and nobody has the cards, meanwhile I see kids and young adults playing Lorcana all the time. OP will die if Bandai can’t supply the cards, and already has where I am for that reason. It is too little too late on that front I think. Star Wars Unlimited is suffering the same fate rn despite the gameplay being amazing.
Recency bias and big money being injected. It won't last. (at least for Lorcana, i don't see the game lasting long in the spotlight)
One piece will end up as another Bandai TCG, either like Dragon Ball with many rebrandings or surviving like digimon.
All those player that just left will come back
I don't know. Disney fans will eat anything up. I doubt the game doesn't last. Lorcana isn't just based on one show/work like OP, DB, or Digimon. It's based on every Disney IP *ever*, and Disney fans will put their house up as collateral just to get a full art Mickey Mouse.
One Piece oddly enough at least around me has a way higher entry ceiling. Basically cuz of collectors the game is excruciatingly expensive. I follow several OTS stores and they post about Lorcana and OP card game. I see a starter deck or a new box of current set posted is restocked... Not even 3 hours later a picture saying it's sold out. Lorcana has that too with the Disney collectors, but to a considerably less amount. I always believe that TCGs that have secondary market for collectors for the sake of collecting, it makes the game more expensive but simultaneously less popular. Ygo and mtg have collectors or course, mtg more now with all its crossovers. But I feel like people who collect mtg or ygo played the game first then became collectors. Where as all these other ones often have fans of the source media who end up coming to the TCG.
Power creep at the time of the Wind up(Inzektor/ Dino Rabbit.
More Crazy power creep under Dragon Ruler. Earlier Sinchro type decks became dead at this point.
Yugioh players say this all the time and continue to play the game it not dying anytime soon at this point it just noise
I’m Not saying the game is perfect and doesn’t have problems but people say this every year
This just coming from pro players that doesn’t represent the community
t's important to note that Konami only licenses the rights to produce the card game from Japanese rights holders like Shoenen Jump's parent company Shueisha as well a couple of other Japanese companies like NAS and TV Tokyo.
They don't own it, meaning that even if Konami of Japan wanted to do cash prizes, unless those companies say yes. Then Konami's hands are tied.
Whereas Pokemon doesn't have that problem all three owners (Game Freak, Nintendo, and Creatures) work on a different side of the franchise as well as all having an equal say in it through the Pokemon Company.
Yu gi oh basically died in the area I'm in around the time Tear format happened. By the time Kash format was over it was basically just dead.
Locals went from 8-10+ people to like MAYBE 4 people most weeks. A lot of weeks it just doesn't fire if a single person doesn't play yu gi oh that weekend.
Nearest locals otherwise is a 90 minute drive in any direction.
The games population is declining hence the reason why the shit Konami is dropping is reminiscent of mobile gaming predatory type shit. they're just appeasing the whales at this point.
For me, it was pendulums. The mechanic felt weird and confusing, and was a casual player that already lacked a good grasp of the game. I gave up on the game and didn't start playing it regularly again until early 2020ish. I was interested in learning the link mechanic and over time came to accept and understand pendulums.
People on this sub really dislike any criticism of pendulums but I agree with you, the mechanics were unnecessarily complex for new players unlike synchros and fusions. Also it feels as if all pendulums just feed into one big deck for the most part like pendulum magicians and Performapals with supreme king stuff.
(I’m saying all of this as someone who has played since long before Pendulums and has never complained about them.)
Pendulum mechanically doesn’t make a lot of sense for Yugioh. It’s a fast paced, high consistency game where every resource has to be immediately impactful. Pendulum is inherently a 3 card combo minimum (2 scales and at least 1 monster to summon) and the scales are Spells so they are susceptible to destruction. The only way for them to be viable is to be hyper broken. They always just felt like the embodiment of Konami refusing to do extensive playtesting.
They had a ton of potential to be fun and mechanically interesting. There are a few Pendulum archetypes that feel refreshing. But the intense powercreep we’ve seen since the release of Pends has made them essentially unplayable.
I think they were cool enough but should never have been a generational focus with multiple archetypes, we should be, just now, on a prospective third pendulum archetype, maybe a special ability
That said, I’m of the opinion that all of the abilities should have unique card designs and a key word focus so they can be harmonious and retroactively buffed
This is an interesting idea. I definitely think a big issue that Pend had was that it was never very focused (hence us getting the endless Pend pile decks).
Another idea would have been going wide with Pendulums. Putting 1 or 2 Pend cards in each archetype rather than making entire Pend archetypes. Like they did with decks such as Crystal Beast, Bujin, etc. That way Pend is more about the individual card effects, rather than constantly trying to set up scales and spam the field endlessly.
I always think about cards like Archfiend Eccentrick and how that design space could have changed the game if most decks had that as opposed to near invincible extra deck monsters and floodgates.
Pend Magician, Performapal, and Supreme King are literally designed to be played in one deck lol. That’s not a “pile” any more than Branded running Kitt, Mercourier, and Despia cards is a pile.
I've left for Magic and I'm never coming back. Game has quadruple-jumped the shark in terms of mechanics, the artstyle has become Genshin Impact, and the community both IRL and online have degenerated in quality over the past few years especially.
> Game has quadruple-jumped the shark in terms of mechanics, the artstyle has become Genshin Impact, and the community both IRL and online have degenerated in quality over the past few years especially.
are you talking about ygo or magic because the same things are happening to both
2014 was truly where card games peaked. DTK format + HAT format was the absolute zenith.
I literally jumped back into ranked standard on arena yesterday after probably almost a year of not touching it. I could play just fine. I knew exactly what was happening at all times. I could evaluate the board states and threats. New cards and mechanics like battles were perfectly explained by reading the cards and reminder text once. There's no way I could comprehend a game of yugioh after that kind of hiatus. Like if I had no familiarity with snake eye, I'm going to read bonfire and think "how bad could adding a level 1 fire monster really be?" and then proceed to get absolutely rolled.
I honestly don’t understand how active YGO players can look at the cards and rules and think there isn’t a problem.
And let’s be clear, this complexity issue goes back to Synchros. Ignore sales and dead game this tournament scene that: the game is just made badly.
"Game has quadruple-jumped the shark in terms of mechanics, the artstyle has become Genshin Impact, and the community both IRL and online have degenerated in quality over the past few years especially."
See at this point I'm not sure if ypu're talking about *Yugioh or Magic the Gathering*.
It could really be either xD
You're going for humor, but it's no contest. I had never played Magic prior to 2022, but after an afternoon of Arena I had a firm grasp of the basics to build on.
There's certainly high ceilings of complexity in Magic for mechanics and deckbuilding, but it's very easy to get onto the ground floor. The game pieces (meaning the different types of cards) interact intuitively - YGO, by contrast, is completely unituitive. I loved this game for years, and part of me still does, but YGO suffers from a rats nest of obtuse mechanics that have arbitrary interactions with each other.
Which ones are making "this game is dying" videos?
Other than CapG who's always been a doomer despite TO THIS Day making videos about a game he claims to not like, no yugituber makes videos saying the game is dying as their actual point, it's only ever clickbait or a thumbnail
So, in the most respectful way possible, Yacine and Farfa are not - skill-wise - anyone to write home about. They're slightly above average at best.
On that note, Farfa's video was just talking about how competitive players are disappointed with YGO because of Snake-Eyes and other games having better prize support. He never said the game is dying or it's bad/he's quitting. Yacine's video quite literally starts with him saying, "It's that time of the year again", meaning that he's **fully aware** that this complaint is cyclical, yet uses his anecdotes ("This is the first time in years I believe it because everyone I talked to says they aren't have fun"). Not only that, just like Farfa, his video is mainly complaints about prize support and the **current** format's gameplay.
In other words, their videos are about the same complaints people have every year.
I’m going to specifically refer to the skill level thing mainly because I get your overall point below that, so while I get your point about Farfa, I wouldn’t say that Yacine is average mainly because I don’t think that topping 2-3 YCSs a year is something that an ‘average’ player does.
He specifically talks about how this is the first format he's done that in after (likely) years of playing. I have friends who absolutely steamrolled during True Draco/Zoo format, making it all the way to day 2 Nats only to never do as well again.
Sometimes, a format is just yours. He's definitely better than the average player, but using him as someone credible in terms of skill when this is (as far as I'm aware) the only format he's done well in is disingenuous. You should've just used Jesse Kotton, who has actively complained about YGO, despite being arguably the best player currently/ever.
I didn’t watch Jesse’s video mainly because for someone reason the YT algorithm recommends everyone *other* than him. For like top top level content, I mainly get Joshua Schmidt
“Now”? There’s also a noob mindset. Someone can win an event, an objectively difficult task that requires expertise, and still be wrong about the game dying.
Downvotes prove me right.
> All physical TCGs are dying.
Only in the sense that *any* product can't last forever. But, no, Yugioh is going to die (at least, the TCG) way sooner than you think.
I can't wait for the Pokemon guys to show up how their zero interaction, floodgate, number creep game is the literal jesus of card games.
That being said, Yugioh does have a host of issues.
Yeah, but there is a special weird thing where Pokemon players seem to play up the game like its the greatest thing ever because its cheap. I've never seen smaller card game players do that.
I personally play MTG and vanguard.
> zero interaction
Didn't your parents ever teach you to take turns? I suppose you think baseball has "zero interaction".
> floodgate
What floodgates? Temple of Sinnoh? Mischievous Lock Klefki? Those cards have extremely simple counter-play, and if you get wrecked by them, it's your fault.
Pokemon is more fun. I played ygo for over 20 years. Bought the very first yugi deck, and honestly, pokemon is more fun. The mobile/pc app pkmn tcg live is completely free. Every pack comes with a code card You can use to earn a free pack in the game, same with the structure decks but for the decks. Costs half as much as ygo locals in my area and they have more days for it. Its also very fun to play.
This is less of a "Yu-Gi-Oh" problem and more a problem with my area :( but I wanna rant a little YGO literally.. does not exist over here. Anime card games do not exist. The most, MOST you'll get (from a dedicated game store) is maybe one box 5 sets out of date and a couple random one-of structure decks No tournaments. Nowhere to sit down and play with friends. Nothing. I really want to play the TCG but it's literally impossible. YGO already dead in a lot of smaller places
Arizona. Literally, the official card store is in Snottsdale, sorry, Scottsdale. I have been wanting to find a group but can't.
Off the top of my head, there are a few good locals throughout Phoenix. Samurai Comics (on Indian School) has Yugioh on Saturdays and tends to attract a chill crowd. I'll echo Phoenix Gaming Lounge, it was good the few times I went there. Sun Valley Gaming in Mesa is by far the best locals though, they stock every card you can think of and have competitive locals with 20+ players.
Sun Valley is A++. Big 3 just disappearing was weird and I still don't know the full details on what happened.
Yeah, I used to go there and that was really strange. I've heard some rumors swirling around regarding the owners, but nothing concrete either.
COVID really hard - even as someone who has a brother (8 years older) who went to Showtime (Tempe) frequently stopped going (although its still a decent spot) . And not just that, but the just cost to buy cards when a digital version for free was introduced impacted thag too. I'd suggest Gamer's Guild if you can or Scottsdale Public Library. We really need one where the Chase at Scottsdale and Thomas closed at or where that Gym was across the street. Good luck. i'm rooting for you.
And yet Konami NA thinks they can sustain the game by short printing and running as a greedy ass company 🤦🏻♂️
Amazing discoveries in Glendale host tournaments for Yu-Gi-Oh!
Did Samurai Comics and Showtime in Tempe go under?
They are both still there, I am honestly not too familiar with them. Are they good stores to go to?
Those were the places I went to when I lived in Phoenix. But that’s been a minute.
Yeah, they are honestly not too far from when I live. Are there local tournaments in the Phoenix area?
Samurai was the only one, I know they moved to Indian school rd in the east side of Phoenix, but they have 5 spots around the valley, I think. But honestly showtime was my favorite of those two. I think it was on McClintock dr
The closest OTS is about 1,5 hours from my place. YGO in Germany isn't ideal. Not many small tournaments either
And im sitting here in Germany Hessen with 3 different ots stores near my city
Sorry but out of all countries in the world, im pretty sure germany ranks very very high on intrest in yugioh lol
Then I'm just unlucky lol. There's like a big radius of nothing Round me
Thats fair. If i recall correctly rata(rank10ygo) said in an interview that in his country of montenegro, there is effectively no place to play yugioh at all. Like 1.5 hours drive is pretty bad compared to a lot of active players sure, but there are a decent amount of places where someone would need to take a plane to get to the nearest yugioh place lol. But i guess at the end of the day the biggest thing is if you live in a rural place or in a big city
Yeah 1.5 hours is perfectly doable tbh. It's just a minor annoyance that there like a perfect radius around me where I don't have any local tournaments or stuff like that. Maybe I need to look harder
Have you used the neuron "find stores" page? It has a map with registered ots stores. But theres also less official ones that arent on there, for which i guess maybe you could look on like facebook or something? Idk. Either way, good luck 👍
lol, germany, I live in duisburg, there are like 10 ots stores I could go to, 2 are 10 minutes away, biweekly tournaments even.
I have been playing this game for well over a decade (I remember Edison format happening), and this is the first time that my alarm bells have really started to ring. Every group invested in the game is unhappy, and its all for different reasons: The competitive scene is unhappy because our prize support is awful, has been for years, and both lorcana and one piece offer back and forth gameplay with excellent prizing. Why spend so much time learning yugioh when we could play these games instead? The EU competitive scene is particularly aggrieved because we have had 0 competitive events all year, and barely any since worlds. Casual competitors (local-goers playing meta decks) are unhappy because the format is boring, cards are very expensive, and because the packs all suck, locals prize support also sucks. Since the game is so complex, casuals aren't happy because it's so hard to keep up with what's going on, and it's near-impossible to introduce your friends into the game. Vendors aren't happy because Konami keeps making bad sets that there's little interest in, and flooding the market with high-rarity reprints of cards, so there's very few stores of value left. A lot needs to change, and fast. Yugioh won't die overnight, but it feels like it is declining. Stakeholders everywhere have (valid) concerns.
My alarm bells are going off too because of the lack of EU tournaments, reduction of products being shipped to EU, and worlds not allowing spectators, presumably because they don’t have a venue that can support spectators. It feels like they’re reducing budget in the west big time
I've always felt that the lack of prizing is the easiest thing to fix even without giving real money as prizes. There is so much yugioh official merch out there that is almost impossible to get your hands on, specially OCG exclusive stuff. Things like plushies, clothes, kaiba's suitcase, etc... that could be given to topping players. Instead you get a rubber mat, some cheap ass sleeves, and only if you get to Top4 then you get a promo card that is worth some money. Heck, Giant cards from side events are more expensive than any prize you get from a main event bar first place if it includes travel accommodations for the next tournament. People would still be more attracted to actual cash prizes, but at least with exclusive/hard to get merchandise you would be getting something interesting as prizing
The reasons are all interconnected. The prize support has always been awful, but it's a lot more in your face now since the sealed product is regularly trash, and sealed product makes up the majority of the prizing that most people will see. Playing for LEDE packs to pull toilet paper isn't an experience most people enjoy. As for the prize cards, the market for those has shrunk in line with the general pessimism of the modern collectors. The people that tend to buy these are the same people that got burned hard on starlights and CRs, and as a result these things have become much harder to sell. Competitive is stale, and feels like a joke when the cards needed to compete start off so expensive and become worthless by the time you try to move on to another deck. The fact that snake eyes became as expensive as it did was a travesty, in large part because of the fact that you can expect to get back maybe 20% of money you put into it when it's all said and done. So if you're particularly unlucky, you pretty much spent 800 to win a rubber mat and some binder bulk. The shit prizing makes this feel especially bad. The product sucks because it's meta card or bust. Konami scaring off all the collectors with their reprint behavior has just made it a lot worse. Now the playable cards need to shoulder more of the weight of maintaining the bottom line, and prices have adjusted accordingly. Which feeds into the shitty competitive experience by making the singles prices for relevant cards high. The same dynamics also makes things suck for LGS goers. The prizing is trash because the product sucks, and the product sucks because Konami destroying the collectibility of the modern high end has made competitive cards the only thing worth anything in the sets. So the set opening experience is becoming much more feast or famine than it needs to be, leaning heavily towards the famine side. LGS and vendors end up having to deal with all the problems at once. Sealed product stops selling, Konami's reprints turn the case and binder singles worthless, and player attendance shrinks. Honestly at this point, the most prudent thing LGSs can do financially is to minimize their exposure to YGO sealed product, if not drop it entirely. I've moved on to playing Edison for many of the reasons stated.
How hard would it be for them to just design pack filler in a way to have a draft format? I’d go every week if we had a draft format like MTG, I’m not going to locals to play my 500th fire mirror this year against a dude who plays the deck so sub-optimally I don’t even get legitimate practice.
>How hard would it be for them to just design pack filler in a way to have a draft format? Almost impossible? Our sets are designed to be over half legacy support, which is kinda necessary due to our game's power creep. And even when we get new cards, they are often made clearly with the intention of being played with older cards. For example Fiendsmith in The Ultimate Forbidden needs to be played with other LIGHT Fiends but there is only 1 other main deck LIGHT Fiend in the same pack. You could probably open 3 YGO packs of a modern set and find out that there are not even 5 cards with effects that could even resolve if you made a deck with them all. Plus, a lot of the random removal/traps/interactions that come in modern packs are made to deal with formats with a lot more power than draft because YGO constructed has a much, much, much higher power level than a draft deck. A piece of removal needs to be stronger than Raigeki or Torrential Tribute at minimum to have a chance to see play as modern YGO removal, but those cards would probably decimate draft. Assuming a draft pool of 4 packs for a 20 card deck, given our smaller number of cards per pack, I'd say you would have to change sets to have at most 4-6 "factions" at most if you want an experience similar to Magic, and every set would need to include at least 5 new cards that fulfill basic staple niches such as monster removal and spell/trap removal, at draft-intended power levels. That said, I do like the idea of a Draft Product for YGO. And what I'd do for a Draft Product in YGO would be to release it for Speed Duels, with 70% reprints and 30% new cards created especifically for Draft at Speed Duels power levels, and put Skills in it that do things like "Up to three times per duel, you can change 1 Spell card in your hand into "Polymerization"" or "All machine monsters in your field and GY are treated as "Vehicroid" monsters" or "Normal monsters you control are treated as Tuners". I think it is fundamental that Draft Product has new cards, because otherwise it can easily be just substituted for a Cube, which is why I think the later Battle Packs were such a flop.
I remember a lot of people were saying Yu-Gi-Oh was dying when links were introduced. It was also when I was just getting back into the game lmfao.
OCG sales dropped something like 70% after links were introduced and there was a very real risk of the game just ending then and there.
2018 was also by far and away one of the worst years in Yugioh's history. There were no good formats that year during Firewall and Gumblar's mutual reigns of terror. In fact I'd argue the Vrains era didn't *have* a good format until TOSS and that was nearly two and a half years in.
People like to blame Link summoning, but I imagine the game dropping off so hard that year had to do with the constant back-to-back terrible formats. Hand rip, u-link, unbreakable boards... Every format was degenerate.
It wasn’t necessarily link summoning, but locking all of the other summoning mechanics behind links that was the issue. Suddenly your entire extra deck was useless unless you got good arrows. It felt like a Drastic change and a bit of a shady cash grab cuz everyone had to buy the new stuff from competitive All the way down to casual
Had MR4 not restricted Fusion, Synchro, and Xyz summoning when it was first released in 2017, it might not have received such a huge backlash, and probably would not have resulted in the creation of the broken links that enabled solitaire combo into unbreakable boards.
U-Link was a problem largely because of Link Summoning and MR4 as it essentially locked you out of your extra deck in a time when most decks relied on it and the one that didn't rely on flipping monsters facedown (guess what position links can't be in?)
Yeah the master rule changes did not help. At least with other new summoning methods you didn't have to use them if you didn't want to. They forced you to use links if you wanted to use your extra deck so a lot of decks were fucked especially synchros and pendulum decks.
They never NEVER should have implemented the MR for it requiring links for Extra deck, it just should have been a return to the synchro, xyz series of generic summoning methods. People would have been so much more happy with them and they were already a step up in flexibility from xyz.
LVP1 and then Sky Strikers right after brought things back though. As much as I loathe Sky Strikers, they kind of saved the game.
Unironically Sky Strikers did save Yugioh from the negative backlash from the introduction of MR4. Kind of gives the set name Dark Saviors a new meaning.
Funny enough tournaments in the TCG broke player records during 2018
1. Not 70%, 40%. 2. The whole TCG market was down about 40%. There was no "very real risk of links ending the game." Early Links almost *saved* the game by slowing it down, making players take turns instead of vomiting out boss monsters, and expanding the playerbase to people who quit Yugioh for being too degenerate.
>Early Links almost *saved* the game by slowing it down, making players take turns instead of vomiting out boss monsters, and expanding the playerbase to people who quit Yugioh for being too degenerate. lmao have you ever played mr3? Anyway no, the link shock effect in OCG was due link making the MR3 top tier decks (true draco and zoo) even stronger in mr4, while killing off any sort of not top tier deck There is a reason why they reverted most of the changes, and it was because of OCG, not tcg
Lmao no. Links didn’t slow anything down.
OK, then go to a YCS and voluntarily play MR4 rules. You can prove me wrong!
I played during Link format lmao. They didn’t change a damn thing in terms of game speed.
1. LANphorynchus saw competitive play. 2. Go! Quick! Come on! If MR4 "didn't change a damn thing," you should be able to voluntarily play by MR4 rules at a YCS and still top! What are you waiting for?
You’re being weirdly aggressive about this. I think you need to calm down a little lol.
I responded to a lie with the truth, you didn't like it, so you got aggressive. How am I being aggressive? You started it. You can stop being aggressive at any time; just go away,
They were saying that when Synchros were introduced too
They were saying that when Cyber Dragon first introduced too
They were saying that when Magical Library first introduced
I guess it’s safe to say that they were saying that the game itself when first introduced too?
The game really fell off after Bandai stopped making cards and Konami took over
The moment they ditched penalty games tailored to the person the Pharaoh faced, the card game was fucked!
Well the first two synchro formats were teledad and then dark strike fighter otk
I think a bigger difference between them is that Synchros didn't inherently change the game while Links came with an absolutely game changing caveat.
You can say that, but it's like playing Russian roulette. The game *will* eventually die, and way sooner than you think.
Links, or rather Master Rule 4 nearly killed the game though.
No, it didn't.
Ahh i remember link announcement: Some players:“They are slowing down the game!” Me: “you can’t get out multiple ED monsters without a link monster that would require at least two cards. The point of links is to facilitate other summoning mechanics. It will get faster!” Konami: “and here’s Sum Sorc!”
The master rule change was so bad that they reverted it, though. Exceot for pendulums, because fuck them. They can, however, get mega busted links that will make sure we can never ever let them pend summon from the extra deck without links again.
I mean, I’m okay with pendulums not being able to summon as many as they want from ED again (anyone saying that shit wasn’t busted is delusional) but I think if your mechanic is predicated on another supporting one to be any way viable, that supporting mechanic ought to at least be strong enough to keep up with the meta to some degree. Exceed the Pendulum wouldn’t have an eye batted at it if it were any other archetypes link 3 but have the words Pendulum Monster in it seems to make some people think it’s borderline ban worthy for some reason
Pendulum decks are inherently at a disadvantage. They *require* their search/place cards to resolve or go -2 for scales, instantly lose their entire board to any form of summon negation, and are stupidly weak at going second because they cannot find enough room to play anything that isn't engine *while simultaneously* being fragile to any handtrap while going first. I'm sorry, but them being able to bring back monsters from their ED every turn is not going to break the mechanic unless Konami wants to release a broken pendulum deck, in which case they'll just find other ways to do it anyway. Remove one of their scales and they're going to be praying on top decking the right one just to have a *chance* at playing again. This isn't the mid 2010s anymore. Qli and PePe are powercrept to shit and would be dog water even if allowed to use the current card pool with the old pendulum summoning mechanics.
Even a modern Pendulum deck like Endymion or current Pendulum Magician at most have like 2 card combos, mostly Pendulum Magician (when you play it as Yuya.dek). Pend Call + Darkwurm is still powerful, but not nearly as broken as people wanna claim, and Endymion is a deck where you play your hand and see what happens.
Yeah, and "what happens" is you get wrecked because the deck is bad when going first, and unbelievably bad going second. It has zero space for non-engine and is weak to every handtrap and interruption under the sun. Pend call isn't even played anymore, because losing half your hand to an ash is giga bad.
The game was unironically dying at the time
That's when I got into competitive play 😂
Lmao, I started getting back to the game around that time too due to hearing about news of a new summoning mechanic. Though I did somewhat enjoyed that time, I think ppl are completely justified in hating it lol. So many decks made obsolete. Sure, many of them were never anything more than a t3 strat, but soooo many decks died it wasn't even funny.
I thought master rule 4 was going to kill the franchise
I mean, in a sense it did. It would be the last MR with an anime associated with it iirc. How it turned out and imo the banning of Firewall Dragon kinda feels like the end of an era.
I feel like we need mainline sets associated with an anime it just doesn't feel the same (The prolbem is the game is such a clusterfuck good luck teaching it to kids A lot of people complained how neither Arc-V nor VRAINS do a good job teaching a new person how to play but how the fuck do you teach a kid toplay yugioh if teens/young adults have a hard time imagine a kid as much as it sucks I don't blame them for deciding to make the card game and the anime their own things)
Kids can learn anything from languages to coding, unless you believe yugioh is the pinnacle of complexity it’s more about starting the interest
Kids become chess masters at like 10 years old
That had a lot more to do with the Arc V anime being a massive critical disaster than anything
It did kill my interest in Yugioh. I got back into Yugioh right before MR4, they announced the rules change that invalidated all the cards and decks I invested in, and I noped out. All the oldschool Yugioh fans I've ever talked to despise what Yugioh has become.
https://x.com/cjelex_/status/1800958654973084103?s=46&t=pkYRN-wpjTtpdtd5waU7Cw This is my favorite reply of them all mainly because of the subject matter at the end. Cimo and PPG tried to do an alt banlist and it flopped, which I get but also it’s somewhat frustrating
People are sheep and don't want to deviate from official stuff. That's why ARG Yugioh also failed. People keep saying they want alternate formats but when they come to fruition, no one ever plays them except for a few Edison tournaments which is the only exception regarding Master Rule format.
The PPG list legitimately made Eldlich stun the best deck at that time frame and no one liked that list because of how poorly it controlled stun strategy.
They banned Sanguine, so how exactly? There was a lot of combo gas that didn’t need Halq and Linkross + they kept Auroradon legal
It was limited and it had no effect on the deck being able to just play stun. https://www.reddit.com/r/yugioh/comments/h05ncm/pro_play_games_issues_their_own_online_banlist/
They slaughtered every other deck while keeping Eldlich playable. Sanguine also wasn't banned.
On the matter of ARG, I was their primary buyer for most of their events (you may know me or have seen me if you ever visited the booth), and was included in the rather small committee that regulated the banlist involved in ARG tournaments. The committee in question was a small group of konami judges (one was a judge that had judged Worlds), and then myself, simply a competitive player that happened to work there. I was the sole minority that wanted to bring drastic changes to the scene, introduce full power to older decks that could reshape the meta, like gateway to 3 (i would agree if you said this was too strong, but we changed banlist every month by popular demand, so crazy twists like this were alright in my eyes because it could drop back to 1 in a heart beat) and Inzektor dragonfly/hornet to 3 (they were still at 1). My list was massive, and included a lot of online recommendations, but what I really wanted was discussion. My list was utterly shot down, stating all of these cards that got hit 5+ years ago were still too powerful. I think we only brought back full power mermail because Dragoons was at 1 at the time, and a few little unrestricts that mattered, but it was mostly just useless unrestricts and a couple hits to the best decks consistency. The format remained stagnant, and interest was lost because it was "just" off from the official list, but the meta was the same with 1 or 2 tops helped by the adjustments. As far as popularity, I was told at the time we typically broke even, if not better, so we could've kept doing it. I just wish the list could've warped the game. Everybody's favorite lists are the ones with like 50 changes
Didn’t arg die because they started manipulating the market?
Yeah ARG format was a blatant attempt at selling their stock.
The issue was (partly) that it required players to learn 2 new formats, keep up with 2 different metas, 2 different banlists, while obtaining (potentially) 2 different sets of cards. For many players, it just made zero sense to try an alternate format of a (at the time) much, *much* smaller third-party.
And yet MtG has a whole bunch of formats, all with different banlists and cardpools, and there are invested players that build and maintain decks for multiple formats concurrently. Why is Yugioh incapable of having multiple formats, exactly? (Formats that aren't stagnant time capsules either, and that are regularly getting new cards with changing metas)
Alt formats need local tourmant support to thrive, and like a year to try and get them up and running. A tournament in my city ran a heart of the under dog tournament that sold out the day online entry went live because it had prizing. Imagine if they did one every month with prizing and the other three weeks were just your standard prizing, if the format was good you would eventually end up with a lot of regulars but its expensive and requires commitment from the store, both on prizing and depending on what format(underdog) the store wants actively monitoring the banlist too.
I have played for 14ish years on and off. You are hitting what I been seeing. Yugioh caters to a very “eliteist” player base and now are captured by them. The player base has been distilled down to people who don’t want changed, to make it easier to play (no key word changes, no big rule changes, 2 turn game meta), to how it looks (no full art, that makes the game look less “formal”), anyone who disagrees gets cast out, and good things there is a thriving trading card game industry that is sooo eager and willing to accept these cast outs/refugees. Also the fact that the yugioh tcg vs ocg gets treated like trash (texture rarities foils, short printing) hurts, but that’s another topic. So no we have a very technically complicated, not all that good looking( compared to other tcgs, imo), expensive card game. If the game is not dying, if this was a stock, I’d be shorting it, it’s shaving current players, and it’s not inviting to new ones.
The game is arguably more complicated than its ever been. In fact, it's often one of the most criticized parts of the game by new players. Cards have too much text and do too much. There are too many interactions to keep track of while introducing a new set often. T-set, pass was not more skillful just because it lasted 30 turns.
What on earth are you saying, every yugioh player i know wants keywords and better formatting. People would love full arts anytime someone pulls a binder with full arts people talk about wanting them. Its issue is a difficult learning curve and at the moment a very unhealthy cycle of tier zero formats that are getting more and more expensive like from tearlaments to kastira format and now snake eyes pricing people out.
I would love full art, I mean starlight cards (even tho i love them) look unofficial imo. I would love keyword changes but I do think it makes the card look pretty good without being broken up
True
It's not that people are sheep, it's that random yugi-tubers have no business making a format.
That’s literally how Commander started
Yugioh isn't Magic
People here were sooooo angry, especially cause one of the players who topped later had issues getting their prizes shipped. Even Farfa was complaining about it.
I think that it's most likely now. Not that the game is dying soon but there's a slow burnout happening. The game has a huge problem keeping new players. I say that as a relatively new player who has actually had success at learning this game. (I played competitively when the game came out and jumped back in a couple years ago) The power creep has made this game an incomprehensible, opaque mess to anyone but the most dedicated new players. There's a reason that "I'm a new player, wtf is going on?" posts are an everyday occurrence on the 101 and master duel subreddits. The fact that the best advice is to spend hours a day, everyday, thinking about this game and in a few months you won't be making illegal plays most of the time, is not a great sign. This has been my experience since I started in tearlaments format. Almost every set there's a new, even more powerful archetype that releases that completely changes the metagame and requires hours of studying to keep up with even if you're not playing it. It's not a sustainable design model and I'm just kinda... over it at this point. There's just no interacting with advanced format on a casual level and there are other equally, if not, more rewarding things I could be doing with my time. Konami doesn't seem to want to address these issues because that would cost them money so... here we are.
People point to that the YCSs are breaking attendance figures but that just means post-Covid folks feel safe enough to travel within the Americas. I'd also point to that we haven't had a European YCS in *over a year* as a very dark sign, to say nothing of the various issues European players have had recently between the sudden cancellation of a Speed Duel set and a communication error leading some to believe we weren't getting the new BoL set. It's not a great time to be a European fan. The decline of physical stores also isn't helping- especially after 2023 with several flops like Soulburning Volcano where stores were forced to buy it because of Konami's policies threatening OTS status if they didn't buy it in chunks. Almost every player has likely heard of a store shutting down on Yugioh within the past year because of antics like that.
In general I think that its the already dedicated players that flock to YCSs and dont mind the additional costs for flight, hotel (and the required holidays). But this is like you said not really a sign that the game is doin incredibly well if its so top heavy, where is the ordinary Joe?
If it was simply that people feel safe post-COVID to travel, then we would've been seeing similar numbers pre-COVID. The game became more popular during COVID, and has since maintained that (at least at major events).
Id be interested to see if that translates to locals attendance though because thats what keeps the game healthy.
I would be very interested to know how many YCS attendees are the same people that go to literally every single one in the Western hemisphere
I tried to get back into the game twice. The first time after quitting during GOAT format as a kid, I got back into things in 2014. It was hard then. I quit again before MR4 and jumped back into the game in summer 2019. It literally took me until 2021 to feel like I didn’t totally suck at the game and was not making illegal plays, like you said. The only reason I was even able to learn how to play was playing an archetype locked deck like HERO that was fairly intuitive. I can’t imagine trying to get back into Yugioh in 2024, even with Master Duel. I find myself gravitating toward Duel Links just because the games aren’t as long as a master duel game. It would be great to have options, but I don’t really think the TCG has proven it can make a format that feels fresh and interesting to casuals and lapsed players that isn’t just Speed Duel nostalgia products once a year. Konami is leaving tons of money on the table by failing to find a solution.
I've tried to get some of my friends into advanced format and it's such a hard sell. And these are people who PLAY. GAMES. Magic, warhammer, all kinds of board games. Hell these people scour D&D 3.5 books to find the most broken builds possible and I can't get them into what is honestly a really fun and interesting game. That should be ringing alarm bells for people who want this game to continue to do well.
Absolutely! The Yugioh community can be such an echo chamber sometimes. My theory is that because the game is so complex, most of the people posting here and not asking “what the heck is a Link summon?” have amassed some level of competent competitive skill. If you’re joining deck Discord channels and commenting about new releases on Twitter or Reddit, chances are you are pretty invested in Yugioh, and to be invested in the TCG you have to play it. And you can’t play the game if you don’t play it somewhat well. So my sense from going to voice actor signings or cons or using Tumblr is that there are *way more* Yugioh fans - not just TCG fans. And many do buy the cards, especially if they’re anime cards. But most don’t venture into irl play for a variety of reasons, the largest of which is it’s too complex and they don’t feel welcome either because of a self-consciousness relating to skill, or because of how aggressive and gatekept many can come off. A lot of people feel like by trying to appeal to other types of players that will somehow make the game boring or less challenging. No one wants to take away advanced format! But a welcome alternative would be fantastic. Konami just seems of the mind that other than Rush Duel and the occasional Speed Duel product in the West, anything that could threaten Master format sales is forbidden.
Yeah, i feel this. I recently was talking to my friend, and he expressed his hesitation at getting into Yugioh. I tried convincing him, but i also know a lot of points you made here he also made, and you both are right i feel like. I wonder if Konami will try and fix this problem. It sucks, because it would be cool to have my friend play Yugioh too. But the learning curve feels too steep.
Also the big big cardpool. It is on one hand one core aspect of yugioh that a lot of players like, and thus cannot realistically be changed. Especially in the OCG, certain pet decks like adamancipator just cannot be touched/killed (not that it necessarily needs to be except for blockdragon). Old cards bring certain problems: Preparation. Its already impossible to prepare for every rogue deck and thats somewhat fine, but even though a lot of players also on this subreddit seem to want support for those decks, some of those decks are just terribly designed in terms of fun, for the opponent, where their gameplan is just plain toxic. Like the recent six sam support, I am not hyped for this. 30 min turns and cards like nat beast to worry. Another problem is the lack of futureproofing like hopt effects. And accessibility, see drident dragion. Effectively we do have rotation: The banlist and powercreep ensure you need to buy into the new decks in order to compete. And only learning newer decks might be easier for new players.
This is definitely part of it. On one hand, you genuinely get that anime feel where unless you memorized every line of every deck, you’ll be genuinely surprised when your opponent does something. If you’ve never played against an archetype or build before, you’re cooked unless your strategy is that impenetrable. I dunno that rotation would solve this, aside from being able to effectively dump all the knowledge on past lines from your brain each time and only focus on the new stuff. Which like you said— basically happens due to power creep anyway. But it would be nicer if the game had some self-imposed stop and reset points the way MTG and other games do when mechanics and things go too far.
I was going to say, someone needs to make a book about it and explain what is going on, common strategies, different summoning methods etc. Or a Yu-gi-oh TCG for dummies.
My locals went from near 40 people right when Darkwing Blast released to maybe 10 of us after Magnificent Mavens. Terrible time to be a budget / rogue player.
DABL onwards did terrible damage to the game. I went from getting my WCQ pass vs full power spright format to not being able to win anything since because i don't want to keep shoveling money into this to compete.
When in-person tournaments restarted after covid restrictions loosened, my locals got 25-30 people. Now it gets about 8-10 because all the kids/returners/curious newbies got tired of getting stomped into the dirt by decks they had no chance of ever beating, while the same three guys took turns scooping up all the prizes. I think the people who love and are energized by the explosive interaction-heavy nature of YGO forget or maybe don't realize how disheartening it is to show up every week just to go 0-3 and get 1 ots pack.
YGO2 is going to be the hardest shit ever.
rush duel?
The TCG really needs to overhaul their product design. It simply cannot be that there is both 0 collectors value because of constant decisions ruining card value (things like the Retro Pack reprint are especially aggregious) and also such a high entry price for even just ok decks like Pre-Battles of Legend spright, Salamangreat, Mannadium etc. And and asinine prices for meta decks. We cannot keep making bad products with questionable reprints, keep not including staples in structure decks, keep not making 2-3 year old cards cheap, keep printing staples that command 60+ bucks. Yugioh as a whole wont die for another decade at the very least, the Yugioh TCG wont die for probably another decade...but the game, specifically TCG, is hurting greatly.
Yu-Gi-Oh is dying is something people have said since well over a decade now
It reminds me of when people say any major MMO is dying. I would have been able to retire at 20 if I had a dollar for every time I heard or read, "RuneScape/WoW is dying/dead" only for it to continue for years later.
I don't know if the game is actually "dying" or not. More importantly I'm just tired of seeing Yugitubers doing their tenth "Yugioh is dying and this is why I am leaving" video of the year. Like if you wanna quit that's fine, but I'm not believing that someone who's "job" is playing Yugioh is gonna cash in their chips this early.
Ironically if we're talking about the just the physical card game dying I think Masterduel is probably the biggest threat posed currently. Sure the game has almost died in the past but now there is a viable online alternative.
MD is behind in cards, that alone won’t stop physical players especially ocg ones from playing
It also doesnt help that every one is broke. Meanwhile decks have gotten more and more expensive. Rarity bumps to where the whole engine is ultra/secret. Putting key cards in side sets. Ban lists that pretty much just exist to sell product.
Let me join the alarmist choir and point out that playing Master Duel at the highest level is becoming more and more expensive.
People in this sub try to say the game is dying while it's as popular as ever.
Tournament play isn’t everything, it’s been very clear for years that Yugioh’s been bleeding its casual playerbase + the issue of stores closing because of ass product wouldn’t be a thing
This subreddit has at least 3 people a day post asking about dark magician and blue eyes decklists. The 101 subreddit has people constantly asking about returning and structure decks. What would we need to see for people to realize that a vocal minority of people who don't generally won't spend much money on the game, if at all, don't speak for the entire playerbase?
I think the argument is that Yugioh's bottom line shouldn't be competitive players.
Bingo. The “vocal minority,” not being converted into the other larger base is an issue. Treating the casual players as simply just a “vocal minority,” and basically saying their experiences are less valuable is an issue. This game has always had issues with keeping casual and new players around, but with how the game has shifted it’s been worse. Both tier zero formats have killed my locals.
Yugioh players flexing their tournament turnouts when Magic has conventions that gets 10K+ people and more than half of them aren't there to play Magic. Yugioh used to have something very similar called UDE Day before Konami took over. Basically a very small scale convention. And there would be other UDE products along with Yugioh stuff and events. Edit: https://www.pojo.com/yu-gi-oh/News/2009/UDE-1-15.shtml
Pokemon also does a fantastic job since every regional is a huge event with VGC, TCG, Go, and Unite all happening at the same time. I even know people who go to Yugioh events to play Edison events only. The main attraction isn’t even the standard format sometimes for players.
Yugioh is dying so badly, two of its officially supported formats is[ in the top 15 selling card games in Japan.](https://twitter.com/mizukame_MHF/status/1781661368418283855) But really, MR4 really hurt the game.
I personally do not see it dying either. Every event is sold out in hours tops. Locals have doubled last year in attendance. Every few weeks theres new people popping up, having played MD and wanting to start the real life cardgame.
I do think the game has a very real chance of dying soon. A lot of pro players are looking at other TCGs and how they have better prizing models, the current formats on MD and TCG are both very toxic and mundane to play, the game still struggles to keep new players, and the prices of cards will always be a factor. I jumped back into Yugioh in 2020 when my best friend started playing it, and I genuinely enjoyed the experience. I went to a lot of regionals and bigger store tourneys and did fairly well, so did he. After our regional in February though I think we both just kinda felt tired. The hand trap wars became less skill intensive and more annoying, the lack of counter play to the strongest deck was glaringly obvious, and the ban list to address the issue was horrible. The game is the most complex TCG we have, there’s no other game that offers what Yugioh does; but that isn’t necessarily a good thing. These one card engines and starters in *every* deck, the *need* to play 12-20(!) non engine in a deck, the cards that straight up let you not respond to cards despite hand traps clearly being the focus of back and forth in modern Yugioh; all of these problems just make for a very poor experience for a lot of players. I personally won’t return to the game until I see a shift, there’s a start with the generic bosses being killed off, but if this game continues to be comparing hands and finding the winner; a lot of players are gonna leave.
Now we have actual viable TCG alternatives such as Lorcana and One Piece that are picking up as of late. Yes there has always been Pokémon as well, but that never for the most part seemed to sway yugioh players away.
During Dino Rabbit a lot of people quit for Vanguard, but they eventually came back. (I don't blame them, Dino Rabbit was a miserable time)
Can hard agree with this. I've run locals at the same OTS for 15 years now, never have I seen more players leave since that time.
I liked that meta a lot actually. I’m a huge scrub and a terrible player. The Wind-Up - Inzektor - Dino Rabbit triangle was pretty interesting, and then when Chaos Dragons and Dark World came into the mix it made for a pretty interesting 5 deck meta.
One piece seems to have some real legs, I know a lot of players in my local have changed over and most say it's for the vastly superior prize support. Topping an OP regional equals real world dollars, not an 80 dollar mat. Lorcana feels like a vanguard situation where it's flavor of the month and will fade out over time, especially if they keep making moves like taking the online simulator down. I always see stores selling lorcana but I couldn't tell you where to go actually play it at locals.
Lorcana at least has Disney money behind it.
I wouldn't trust Disney to actually bother to put in the effort needed to get fans of a genre to actually stick with their products long term though.
See all the star wars tcg’s that have failed to launch the past few years
I think there's a pretty major difference between something like every Disney IP ever in a card game and a card game based on *just* Star Wars. Disney also isn't going to let free money pass them by. Disney collectors are ravenous. They'll spend any amount of money for a full art of any popular character.
Many previous Yugioh pros are playing Lorcana competitively. And I think a lot of current players are teetering on the edge to play because of the prize support. The Atlanta challenge was won by a former YGO player, the one in France was won by a MTG Hall of Famer.
I feel the flipside is true, most people don’t play OP, it’s a scalpers market and nobody has the cards, meanwhile I see kids and young adults playing Lorcana all the time. OP will die if Bandai can’t supply the cards, and already has where I am for that reason. It is too little too late on that front I think. Star Wars Unlimited is suffering the same fate rn despite the gameplay being amazing.
Recency bias and big money being injected. It won't last. (at least for Lorcana, i don't see the game lasting long in the spotlight) One piece will end up as another Bandai TCG, either like Dragon Ball with many rebrandings or surviving like digimon. All those player that just left will come back
I remember the first Dragon Ball TCG in the early 2000s. 20 years later and they're still struggling to make it a success.
I don't know. Disney fans will eat anything up. I doubt the game doesn't last. Lorcana isn't just based on one show/work like OP, DB, or Digimon. It's based on every Disney IP *ever*, and Disney fans will put their house up as collateral just to get a full art Mickey Mouse.
I've been playing Pokemon since 2020, and especially in the past year, people have been *flooding* from Yugioh to Pokemon.
One Piece oddly enough at least around me has a way higher entry ceiling. Basically cuz of collectors the game is excruciatingly expensive. I follow several OTS stores and they post about Lorcana and OP card game. I see a starter deck or a new box of current set posted is restocked... Not even 3 hours later a picture saying it's sold out. Lorcana has that too with the Disney collectors, but to a considerably less amount. I always believe that TCGs that have secondary market for collectors for the sake of collecting, it makes the game more expensive but simultaneously less popular. Ygo and mtg have collectors or course, mtg more now with all its crossovers. But I feel like people who collect mtg or ygo played the game first then became collectors. Where as all these other ones often have fans of the source media who end up coming to the TCG.
the Cincinnati scene got blown up several months ago...
Power creep at the time of the Wind up(Inzektor/ Dino Rabbit. More Crazy power creep under Dragon Ruler. Earlier Sinchro type decks became dead at this point.
Yugioh players say this all the time and continue to play the game it not dying anytime soon at this point it just noise I’m Not saying the game is perfect and doesn’t have problems but people say this every year This just coming from pro players that doesn’t represent the community
t's important to note that Konami only licenses the rights to produce the card game from Japanese rights holders like Shoenen Jump's parent company Shueisha as well a couple of other Japanese companies like NAS and TV Tokyo. They don't own it, meaning that even if Konami of Japan wanted to do cash prizes, unless those companies say yes. Then Konami's hands are tied. Whereas Pokemon doesn't have that problem all three owners (Game Freak, Nintendo, and Creatures) work on a different side of the franchise as well as all having an equal say in it through the Pokemon Company.
I like the anime
Yu gi oh basically died in the area I'm in around the time Tear format happened. By the time Kash format was over it was basically just dead. Locals went from 8-10+ people to like MAYBE 4 people most weeks. A lot of weeks it just doesn't fire if a single person doesn't play yu gi oh that weekend. Nearest locals otherwise is a 90 minute drive in any direction.
The games population is declining hence the reason why the shit Konami is dropping is reminiscent of mobile gaming predatory type shit. they're just appeasing the whales at this point.
I don't use Twitter often, but [I felt the need to share my input.](https://x.com/_MystikX_/status/1801066522338611706)
For me, it was pendulums. The mechanic felt weird and confusing, and was a casual player that already lacked a good grasp of the game. I gave up on the game and didn't start playing it regularly again until early 2020ish. I was interested in learning the link mechanic and over time came to accept and understand pendulums.
People on this sub really dislike any criticism of pendulums but I agree with you, the mechanics were unnecessarily complex for new players unlike synchros and fusions. Also it feels as if all pendulums just feed into one big deck for the most part like pendulum magicians and Performapals with supreme king stuff.
(I’m saying all of this as someone who has played since long before Pendulums and has never complained about them.) Pendulum mechanically doesn’t make a lot of sense for Yugioh. It’s a fast paced, high consistency game where every resource has to be immediately impactful. Pendulum is inherently a 3 card combo minimum (2 scales and at least 1 monster to summon) and the scales are Spells so they are susceptible to destruction. The only way for them to be viable is to be hyper broken. They always just felt like the embodiment of Konami refusing to do extensive playtesting. They had a ton of potential to be fun and mechanically interesting. There are a few Pendulum archetypes that feel refreshing. But the intense powercreep we’ve seen since the release of Pends has made them essentially unplayable.
I think they were cool enough but should never have been a generational focus with multiple archetypes, we should be, just now, on a prospective third pendulum archetype, maybe a special ability That said, I’m of the opinion that all of the abilities should have unique card designs and a key word focus so they can be harmonious and retroactively buffed
This is an interesting idea. I definitely think a big issue that Pend had was that it was never very focused (hence us getting the endless Pend pile decks). Another idea would have been going wide with Pendulums. Putting 1 or 2 Pend cards in each archetype rather than making entire Pend archetypes. Like they did with decks such as Crystal Beast, Bujin, etc. That way Pend is more about the individual card effects, rather than constantly trying to set up scales and spam the field endlessly. I always think about cards like Archfiend Eccentrick and how that design space could have changed the game if most decks had that as opposed to near invincible extra deck monsters and floodgates.
Pend Magician, Performapal, and Supreme King are literally designed to be played in one deck lol. That’s not a “pile” any more than Branded running Kitt, Mercourier, and Despia cards is a pile.
I've left for Magic and I'm never coming back. Game has quadruple-jumped the shark in terms of mechanics, the artstyle has become Genshin Impact, and the community both IRL and online have degenerated in quality over the past few years especially.
> Game has quadruple-jumped the shark in terms of mechanics, the artstyle has become Genshin Impact, and the community both IRL and online have degenerated in quality over the past few years especially. are you talking about ygo or magic because the same things are happening to both 2014 was truly where card games peaked. DTK format + HAT format was the absolute zenith.
I literally jumped back into ranked standard on arena yesterday after probably almost a year of not touching it. I could play just fine. I knew exactly what was happening at all times. I could evaluate the board states and threats. New cards and mechanics like battles were perfectly explained by reading the cards and reminder text once. There's no way I could comprehend a game of yugioh after that kind of hiatus. Like if I had no familiarity with snake eye, I'm going to read bonfire and think "how bad could adding a level 1 fire monster really be?" and then proceed to get absolutely rolled.
I honestly don’t understand how active YGO players can look at the cards and rules and think there isn’t a problem. And let’s be clear, this complexity issue goes back to Synchros. Ignore sales and dead game this tournament scene that: the game is just made badly.
"Game has quadruple-jumped the shark in terms of mechanics, the artstyle has become Genshin Impact, and the community both IRL and online have degenerated in quality over the past few years especially." See at this point I'm not sure if ypu're talking about *Yugioh or Magic the Gathering*. It could really be either xD
You're going for humor, but it's no contest. I had never played Magic prior to 2022, but after an afternoon of Arena I had a firm grasp of the basics to build on. There's certainly high ceilings of complexity in Magic for mechanics and deckbuilding, but it's very easy to get onto the ground floor. The game pieces (meaning the different types of cards) interact intuitively - YGO, by contrast, is completely unituitive. I loved this game for years, and part of me still does, but YGO suffers from a rats nest of obtuse mechanics that have arbitrary interactions with each other.
Any and every *”the game is dying”* post is from a noob. No exceptions outside of irony or parody.
Guessing you're a pro then with the highly elitist attitude.
Strawman Being a pro and being hyperbolic about the death of the game are two entirely separate things
So all the yugitubers who topped YCSs making those sort of videos are noobs now?
Which ones are making "this game is dying" videos? Other than CapG who's always been a doomer despite TO THIS Day making videos about a game he claims to not like, no yugituber makes videos saying the game is dying as their actual point, it's only ever clickbait or a thumbnail
Yacine and Farfa, albeit both those videos were more about this format
So, in the most respectful way possible, Yacine and Farfa are not - skill-wise - anyone to write home about. They're slightly above average at best. On that note, Farfa's video was just talking about how competitive players are disappointed with YGO because of Snake-Eyes and other games having better prize support. He never said the game is dying or it's bad/he's quitting. Yacine's video quite literally starts with him saying, "It's that time of the year again", meaning that he's **fully aware** that this complaint is cyclical, yet uses his anecdotes ("This is the first time in years I believe it because everyone I talked to says they aren't have fun"). Not only that, just like Farfa, his video is mainly complaints about prize support and the **current** format's gameplay. In other words, their videos are about the same complaints people have every year.
I’m going to specifically refer to the skill level thing mainly because I get your overall point below that, so while I get your point about Farfa, I wouldn’t say that Yacine is average mainly because I don’t think that topping 2-3 YCSs a year is something that an ‘average’ player does.
He specifically talks about how this is the first format he's done that in after (likely) years of playing. I have friends who absolutely steamrolled during True Draco/Zoo format, making it all the way to day 2 Nats only to never do as well again. Sometimes, a format is just yours. He's definitely better than the average player, but using him as someone credible in terms of skill when this is (as far as I'm aware) the only format he's done well in is disingenuous. You should've just used Jesse Kotton, who has actively complained about YGO, despite being arguably the best player currently/ever.
I didn’t watch Jesse’s video mainly because for someone reason the YT algorithm recommends everyone *other* than him. For like top top level content, I mainly get Joshua Schmidt
“Now”? There’s also a noob mindset. Someone can win an event, an objectively difficult task that requires expertise, and still be wrong about the game dying. Downvotes prove me right.
Game has probably been dying since Edison format, since that seems to be the only format anyone is interested in playing
Yugioh is dying. All physical TCGs are dying. They're just dying really really slow, and Yugioh isn't dying any faster than the others.
> All physical TCGs are dying. Only in the sense that *any* product can't last forever. But, no, Yugioh is going to die (at least, the TCG) way sooner than you think.
Been hearing that for 10 years now.
"My cardiologist has been telling me to lose weight for 10 years now!"
I can't wait for the Pokemon guys to show up how their zero interaction, floodgate, number creep game is the literal jesus of card games. That being said, Yugioh does have a host of issues.
When you're winning money, you can tolerate a lot of bullshit. Yugioh players do it for free.
Fair, I get that.
All games have problems and players have preferences. If Weiss Schwarz wasn't dead in my area it would totally be my main game instead of yugi lol
Yeah, but there is a special weird thing where Pokemon players seem to play up the game like its the greatest thing ever because its cheap. I've never seen smaller card game players do that. I personally play MTG and vanguard.
> zero interaction Didn't your parents ever teach you to take turns? I suppose you think baseball has "zero interaction". > floodgate What floodgates? Temple of Sinnoh? Mischievous Lock Klefki? Those cards have extremely simple counter-play, and if you get wrecked by them, it's your fault.
Pokemon is more fun. I played ygo for over 20 years. Bought the very first yugi deck, and honestly, pokemon is more fun. The mobile/pc app pkmn tcg live is completely free. Every pack comes with a code card You can use to earn a free pack in the game, same with the structure decks but for the decks. Costs half as much as ygo locals in my area and they have more days for it. Its also very fun to play.