Every archetype needs a "Toon Table of Contents" with a hard archetype/summon lock for a set condition (turn, hand size, GY size, etc.). Like how you have "fusion Deployment" for fusion decks, but it locks you to only fusion summon. Just make it fit the theme. Like How "Dark Magician" has "Soul Servant"; it does like the "Toon" card, but can work around things like "Ash Blossom" if played right. Another method would be a means for a archetype-specific spell/trap placer from deck. Again, like how "DM" has "Magician's Salvation". The next big thing would be a limit on archetypes used in deck during tournaments. Like 2 per deck unless the cards specifically mention others like how "Stardust", "Synchron", "Warrior", and "Junk" all have cards that lists each other. Series like the "Solemn" cards would be fine to have more than one of in deck. I know if Project Ignis can have the cards available for search and have their archetypes, then Konomi can as well; especially since you have to first register your deck. You can just upload it to their site, and it will automatically let you know.
Additional thoughts if the deck is very consistent it should also have a much weaker power level, you shouldn't be able end on unbreakable or lock out boards.
conversely, I think the idea of choosing to make your deck a little less consistent for potentially increased power or utility is interesting as a deck building decision
true. one example is flower cardians. I would say this deck is very consistent but you spend 20 minutes comboing to end up on the worst endboard bro has ever seen
@@babaG819Absolutely, the problem is how modern starters flow into the same combo lines. I want to consistently open playable, but I also want to have a cool "ah ha" moment when I find a new line. Seeing the same thing over and over is lame.
Players want this. There's even an advocacy for only a handful of decks to be played, some even enjoying the tier zero because they don't want to take risks(facing decks they are unprepped for) even in deckbuilding. "Skillful", yeah right.
@@jccesista2167 I've heard this argument in goat format lol, "we need less players to play rogue decks to the chaos mirror is more skillful" "I've spent 1000s of hours practicing the mirror, rogue decks ruin my practice". Like, just play Chess, or Go, or Shogi, or an actual game that's always the same.
Convince Konami to make less consistent decks, then convince players to buy them. This is why we got what we got. The suship has sailed. You can never go back to the restaurant.
Yugioh has had formats before where the meta deck got banned out and the one that replaced it was weaker, it's entirely possible to do that again. The problem is all the money you'd lose as you pulled the competitive tier back in line with lower tiers - there's no value to Konami in creating a format where existing decks are competitive without expensive new cards. So from a financial perspective, you'd need an alternate format to do this, like Rush but less ungabunga.
The actual issue I think that's here is that, yugioh has had "consistent" decks for a very long time now. Cards that search each other and the like. But for even the best consistent decks of the past, you sacrificed for that consistency, usually power, being able to otk, and the such. But now every deck has the ability to patch up those weaknesses, usually with generic good stuff. Constant access to otk tools, backrow removal and the like generally means a deck being hyper consistent also has the ability to just win more. This is why Snake Eyes is so good right now. All the stuff they make outside of Flamberge is mostly just generic good stuff, because it's the best thing you can be doing. And with all of the "Poplar" effects we're getting for archetypes, this consistency is just where we're going in yugioh.
I see consistency as a bad thing after a certain point because Yu-Gi-Oh is not even a card game anymore. I am not saying it has to be based purely on luck or anything, but it has to have the element of chance, and thinking on the fly if you don't get the cards you want.
if I were a card designer at Konami 20 years ago, I would have made every single searcher an excavate. For example ROTA would be excavate the top 10 cards of your deck to pick a valid warrior or whatever. Introduces consistency while keeping luck as part of the game otherwise it becomes less about who is the better player and more about who has the better deck. Some decks already play themselves with how linear they are
@@starjadiancloneinvestigato1772Making everything an excavator would also reduce all that shuffling you need to do during the game 😅 Digimon does that really well, I don't think you look through your deck at any time, you only excavate and then put at the bottom. That's at least how it was when I played
@@starjadiancloneinvestigato1772 Just ensure the non-chosen card goes to the bottom in any order. We know how dangerous milling 5 can be, let alone 9.
Consistency is the worse kind of powercreep, it homogenizes deck building ,it enables toxic 18-20 hand trap metas, it rapidly escalates card design into 1 card combos that search, extend and provide GY utility. Decks like snake eyes should exist because they leave very little openings and weaknesses. Cards that provide consistency should have either drawbacks, be a risk to play for the fear of being interrupted or limit the endboard with archetypal locks. Having inconsistent decks would also make people fall back and have to rely on other strategies such as backrows or sub optimal tech. We really can not keep going like this how far will we have to go to say enough is enough decks are too complex and they are too explosive in their combo lines.
There's an important distinction between consistency and compaction. Compaction requires consistency, but not all consistent decks are compact. You tend to get compaction when the starter cards are the same as the extender cards or the finisher cards, but you can also achieve consistency with these cards separate, by increasing the number of pure starters. Eg, Witchcraft can have 15 starters, but the starters don't do anything except find the finishers, and both require a healthy supply of in-archetype spell cards do use their effects. And for the record, starters should have severe locks (although not entirely archetypal, especially for normal summon starters), extenders should have downsides. If the starters have the downsides, Ash still shuts down all decks.
Honestly, what I want out of Yugioh is for both players to be able to play. Remember those times? Those were good times. But now it’s like whoever wins the die roll and goes first gets to set up whatever board they want, usually generic good stuff disruption, and then they win because their opponent only opened 1 of their 3 Ash Blossoms. Or maybe they did get interrupted more than once, but the hyper recursion and “our turn” mechanics that modern decks seem to have meant that they still had enough disruption available to them that their opponent wasn’t actually able to do anything.
not as good as you think it is. master duel had a limit 1 event and what do you think happened? 99% of players were doing tearlaments kashtira. Going from 3 to 1 hurts lower tier decks more than upper tier decks because the upper tier decks only need 1 starter card out of the opening hand of 5
The hyper-fixation on turn 1 in Yu-Gi-Oh! has basically necessitated decks be uber consistent. When you have a 40 card deck but only the first 5 cards you see actually matter, anything less than 85% consistency (no this isn't an arbitrary number, it's the exact % of opening a starter when you have 12 copies in a deck which competitive players have committed to memory at this point) is almost unviable in a competitive setting. Because if you don't open playable, you've basically just lost the game at that point without even being able to do anything.
Powerful but fair decks. Yeah they play D Shift but in shit formats like this something has to even the playing field. Which is why D Shifter needs to stay with all these insane Graveyard reliant decks. Exo and S-Force are at least interesting to play but not so oppressive no one wants to play against them (and have a fair chance winning. Which happe doesn't against Snake Eyes, which damn near auto loss.)
The more consistent a deck is, the less variety the duels featuring it have. An extremely consistent deck might have 5 duels in a row that are 95% exactly the same, outside of whatever the opponents did. Less consistency is better, but still having some. Moderation is key. The same thing every time gets stale and loses any fun, even if it wins. As for off-archetype cards being used in certain decks, it really depends on the card and situation. Elborz (the Simorgh field spell) can be really solid in decks like Mist Valley, and the Cyber Dragon spell you mentioned can be great for other light/machine decks, but I feel it's a problem if the card starts becoming more associated with the other deck than its originally intended home. One that comes to mind is Galaxy Soldier being spammed to death for an easy CyDra Infinity.
The game will never be fixed, people will either complain that they brick and lose to RNG or complain that everything is consistent and lose to RNG. The only way Yugioh can be fixed is with a hard reboot which no one is going to do.
When you can access literally any card in your deck at any time that's a problem. It results in combos that go into boards of negations, floodgates, and even hand traps. It speeds up the game to a point where it will end in 2 turns max at any time. By speed I'm not talking literally since the turns take longer because of all of the combos. I'm talking about speed in terms of number of turns.
At this point there should be a turn timer now to force players to play more simpler/straight forward combos and draw out games longer. This would also help in drawing out the main end board you’re trying to make over a couple turns instead of one
The limit for me is when the consistency of an archetype is designed to ensure you can get to your most powerful end board. End board power and variety should depend on your deck building decisions, the deck you're up against, the cards you've drawn, and your skill in execution. I think we should have enough consistency to make /an end board with some interaction/ with any given hand, but never a board of stacked omninegates or copious amounts of pluses and resource recursion.
Well it's kinda annoying, you are then forced to open exceptionally well also. You have to then play a deck that is capable of matching it, it just pushes old strategy's out faster. But hey that's just my opinion
I like to think of there being two types of consistency: linear consistency and varied consistency. Linear consistency is your deck being theoretically able to get to the very same play pattern or the very same optimal combo every game. Varied consistency is your deck being able to open at least playable every game but your lines or the monsters you summon are very different because of maybe you opening different engines or something like that. Bricking aka one player not being able to play is always undesirable. Linear consistency however is also bad because it makes games against a certain deck feel samey. Varied consistency I'd consider the sweet spot. A very simple example for varied consistency would be Quick Draw in Edison format. You can open Lonefire and go into Tytannial backed up by a bunch of backrow. Or you can open Quickdraw Dandy, make Drill Warrior and start grinding. Same deck but very different openings.
This is exactly the right way to look at it. A deck should almost always do something fun on its turn, but shouldn't always do the exact same fun thing in the exact same way.
Consistency is the main draw people have toward Yugioh, so it is a good thing, but the things that decks can "Consistently" end on or get to should be weaker or less oppressive, hard stop. Great video Paul.
Remember when searchers had restrictions like hero or destiny signal, or costs for their activation like one for one or were traps instead of quick play spell cards? Or as Paul said, random draw cards that sometimes shuffled stuff back into the deck which meant possibly you could still brick
The thing with an archetype working with unintended cards is because of accidents, not intended, but what KONAMI can clearly do is control the releases of searchers that make their archetype broken. That is what they can do, to slow down with the hyper consistency.
I think it's either internal consistency or engine mashup these days. That way you dont have to draw the precise starter, but you're likely to draw one of many. See how Kashtira and Adventure get splashed. I think what's bad is the quality and quantity with consistency. You end up with more cards and they're disruptive as First turn player. Also, "searching your deck for a card" is now done so often, there are many windows to Ash blossom. Some are more optimal than others. The problem is this requires meta knowledge and not necessarily the game state. It makes it very hard to break down why and when you should Ash Blossom a card. If you were explaining this to a new comer, its just not friendly.
Consistency is great overall, the problem is more the output of what a deck can do that is the problem. Speedroids are fairly consistent, but they only really do one or two things and that's about it, they have serious choke points that are reliably exploited by standard hand traps. Earth Machines are relatively consistent, but again they have choke points and are fairly insular. Then we get to lore archetypes of late and they're fairly splash able with many other archetypes, allowing them to shore up weak points.
@@abdurachmanromzy4778 I disagree with this take, Genex had a lot of searchers and for their time were relatively consistent. The issues they suffered from were pay offs and a lack of cohesion to really tie things together. They were arguably more consistent than any of the OG Duel Terminals archetypes save for X-Sabers. They certainly had their fair share of monsters appear in meta or powerful decks, more than can be said for most of Duel Terminal and the lore cards that predates Duel Terminal. Consistency and effective pay offs really came to prominence with Nekroz and Qliphorts. From there things snowballed.
Consistency and one card combos should really be for decks with a lower ceiling. A counterpoint I sometimes hear is that Konami needs to make decks busted in order to sell product, and that's just a moot point. You only need a deck that is arguably one of the best decks in the format to sell product, not a deck that leads to a tier 0 format. Every tier 0 deck in modern YGO could have been designed more carefully right from the start so that they would be around a tier 1 power level. This is where I think lowering the consistency from a design standpoint for these decks would help make them less oppressive.
Design is hard in a game that's already this efficient. You can intend for a deck to be tier 1, and make something that's only a small tweak away from being tier 0 and tier 3 - and remember that "the meta" is about what people are using, not what's strictly the best, so a deck doesn't have to be a blow-out winner to become a tier 0 deck, it just has to be enough better than the other options that running anything else might be giving away a win one in every ten games. Konami won't be making tier 0 archetypes deliberately, they'll just be erring on the side of ensuring that a new deck is desirable because designing only a little weaker could tank sales.
Consistency is not an issue, the problem is with hyper consistency where you always can go full combo cuz your deck has multiple ways to get to the starter. And then getting hand trapped doesn’t really do anything.
havent finished the video yet but i always think its interesting how old old cards seemed to be independent and always do something on their own, while newer cards need to combo to get them to work, causing alot of bricking, and now the newest cards dont even need to combo they just need to search for the 1 card that does it all lol
Consistency is one thing but playing the same exact game over and over again gets overly tedious. I can’t ever bring myself to play something like Snake-Eyes because I’ll get bored after so long of pulling off the exact same combo line with very slight variations leading to the same result. I’ve realized a long time ago when it comes to card games there has to be some kind of essence of chance involved to make it exciting. With the way Yugioh currently is it’s very much what you see is exactly what you get. Now there are a lot of people who do like the consistency has now and that’s ok but as for me it gets stale after a while. I’ve been setting up a Duel Night with my friends similar to Team Sam’s version and have been having a blast with it drafting LOB decks because every move while simple feels impactful vs my modern decks where I’m just on autopilot mindlessly playing cards to reach the same end result over and over. The consistency that the game follows now definitely feels like it’s trying to feed into the competitive aspect more and more and again that’s fine but for the most part I just want to play with my friends or occasionally at a locals sometimes. The only way for it to be “fixed” for those who miss the old way in my belief is to hard reboot, and those who say rush duels are missing the point, when we say hard reboot we mean scrap the current game and make the same game with the monsters we like but Konami just do a better job keeping card designs simple and fun. Now I know that won’t happen but that’s all just my take on it.
As a magic and now ex yugioh player there is certainly a consistency problem with yugioh. It really feels like going first means one of 3 things. You win, you get countered, or you bricked.
yugoh's at the point where it NEEDS to slow down to give both players turns to draw cards, as it is now hyper consistency is rewarded because you need to open your combo turn 1 or you just lose, if the game was slowed down so it lasted a few more turns, then less consistent but still powerful decks could potentially see play, then there could also be an interesting dynamic of explosive turn 1 decks vs decks that need time to ramp up
I don't mind hyper consistency, if it wasn't YGO. In other card games, consistency can be traded for overall power, so as long as there is a trade-off it can be balanced. However, in YGO consistency nearly always combos into very powerful cards, meaning you get to have your cake and eat it too, most of the time.
Consistency in a vacuum is good, the problem is when high consistency coincides with small packages or high recursion. Lots of access to starters is nice since it results in less swinginess and fewer dead hands, but if every starter is also an extender and a floater and removal and protection, that's too much. For example, Witchcraft can run functionally 15 starters, but that's fine because they still need to run 5-8 main-deck power cards and maybe 10 spell cards, which means that the highly consistent build doesn't have space for many engines or handtraps. There's an interesting lesser-mentioned problem here too - when a deck has too many searchers, you get to a point where you have nothing left worth searching. That's probably a useful measure for when a deck has become too consistent.
I definitely prefer the way Digimon does searching by revealing the top X cards and pick something based on archetype instead of being able to just look for a specific card. It almost defeats the purpose of having a deck in the first place when you can just pick and choose which cards you have in hand
Games like Duel Masters and Digimon actively avoids direct searching. The best they have is Excavate a number of cards on top of your deck and you add the card(s) that fit that criteria. And yes you can whiff/miss but it encourages you to fill your deck with those themed cards and nothing or little else. And Rush Duel has no Search cards at all, their way of "searching" is to fill the graveyard with mass mill cards and use Graveyard recover cards to get the pieces that they want.
The question of consistency can be answered, on a personal level, by a hypothetical alternate format: if you did not draw cards, but chose them from the deck, would you like the game more or less? You choose your opening hand and if you activate a draw card, you choose exactly what cards you draw, if you mill cards, you choose what cards to mill. Complete consistency, zero RNG. Do you load up on gas in your opening hand, or disruption, knowing you can always get your starter on your draw? Do you run specific search cards, or fulfill the requirements for draw cards to increase your card advantage? Do you run multiple copies of your starters in case one gets negated or do you run multiple engines and extenders to create more layered combos? I couldn't tell you what would actually be better, but I feel that it seems like it would take a lot of the fun out of the idea of playing Yugioh. As such, I also dislike consistency as a power creep angle - I enjoy variance in a card game.
Yugioh in general is a bit too consistent but that's not necessarily a bad thing unless there are specific archetypes which do it best - fiendsmith, white woods, snake eyes, etc
Consistency really has removed the life from this game. Having tools that can help start a combo is one thing, but for one card to do enough to create a whole end board is insane. Variance is yugiohs greatest strength, regardless of what any "pro" may have to say.
Variance is fun in a Match up spread. Having to return to 2016 where monarch would routinely wait for you to finish your turn draw then say game 2 and hope they open better next time isn't fun variance for either side.
@@DTSK371 I would really like more Gravekeepers. I somehow beat Snake-Eyes 2/3 times with them, going first and second. They do have some legitimately insane cards, it’s just that they’re slow. Their searchers are awful, monster effects are horribly weak. Trap cards are okay to bad, and their in archetype boss monsters are laughable. I want more extra deck and a retrain on a lot of the monsters. Some serve their purpose perfectly like Commandant, Heretic, Spiritualist, and recruiter. Their spells are actually pretty good, no changes there. I don’t want a SuperHeavy Samurai speed Gravekeepers, I just want their Archetype to not be stuck in 2009. Ending with 2-3 Gravekeepers, Necrovalley, and a spell or trap would be enough. No massive card advantage, just give a board that can’t be disintegrated instantly without spamming Solemn cards.
I think that one possible "solution" to some of these issues modern yugioh is going through in regards to extreme levels of consistency for most meta decks would be to change some of the ruling regarding Main Deck and Extra Deck sizes. Like if we changed the min. main deck size to 60 and the max. to 80 and lower Extra Deck size to just 10, this should significantly lower the consistency of almost all decks by default and force players to pick very carefully what they play in their extra deck. The ED under this hypothetical can no longer function as a catch all toolbox for all situation and players would be steered to playing a more main deck play style with more tech cards.
Heyy I think this would actually fix the game, it would make too much searching redundant if you already got all your search targets, make decks more versatile
@@MiguelMartinon I have never played MTG so i dont know how close my suggestion is to its rules. This was just an idea i had while brainstorming ways to improve the game. Its not a one and done solution to yugioh's and certainly not a silver bullet.
@@GG_Nowa not really. 60 card decks are still ultra consistent thanks to calculators mathing out the required statistics. All his rules are is Combo Winter featuring 10 companions. Not a great idea.
For yugioh 2.0 1. Exclusive Alternate art for master duel only. End of a season which ever top two decks were played the most get an alternative art for their boss monster or primary spell card. 2. Rematch option 3. Ability to see your opponents timer 4. More gems if your able to win the duel within 100 seconds (not excluding connection fails) 5. Highlight text in different colors that indicate the effect is to negate, special summon, destroy, banish, draw/search
>more gems if you win in 100 seconds I love having games devolve into accescode otk exactly as the norm rather than push people off that to promote lower to the ground decks
With the exception of floodgates Branded is the perfect example of what decks with 3 or more 1 card starters should look like. Unless you build it that way you generally don't get more than 2 of 3 monsters per turn. Mirrorjade is important to because it keeps your opponent from cheesing out a win that when they go first that can come from trading blows equally until the person going first wins. In smaller boards cards like Mirrorjade can be super important to break stalemates.
Now that someone mentioned a few videos ago the videos are usually slightly different. We have expanded now the LOCATION is slightly different! HYPE!!!
I am fine with consistency whether it would be for new archetypes or new support for old archetypes as long as there is a restriction and I am not just talking about paying life for cost, discard for cost etc etc. I want new archetypes to have an EXTRA Deck restriction or even main deck/hand special summoning restrictions. For example Floowandereeze is a balanced archetype (minus the non engine like Shifter of course), because if you activate the smaller monster's effects, you cannot SS from your ED. Red Dragon Archfiend/Resonator archetype is balanced as well because it locks to Dark Dragon Synchros. Ragnaraika locks you to Plant/Insect/Reptile. etc etc
I don't really like the power creep of consistent 1-card combos that we have been moving into. Yugioh has always been balanced by the idea that there are plenty of ridiculous, unfair, broken things you can do, but you can not do them consistently, so they don't see play outside of gimmick decks. But recently we have had more and more decks that can provide the end board of a 2-3 card "inconsistent" combo off a single starter. And yeah, the ability for those decks to just play 15+ hand traps because of all the consistency they have is pretty annoying for the format as well, it just shuts out rogue options and turns higher level play into trading hand traps sometimes. I'm not against 1-card combos as a concept, but the way yugioh has moved it sort of feels too sacky, where so many decks just win if they draw it or lose if they don't, rather than it simply enhancing their end board or something if they draw it. I think a pretty good solution to this has been changing decks to have hyper consistency with severe restrictions. Purrely basically can't have a hard brick, but it needs to discard its cards to actually get there and therefore gets punished really hard by disruption. Runick is the same thing, every spell can equal their combo but they have harsh restrictions that prevent them being too splashable of an engine. Genex now allows any genex name to become full combo for them. Even sky striker to a degree has many ways to turn various cards into their end goal
Consistency is fine. Just what is done with or towards it is the problem. The handtrap wars against Snake Eyes is pretty depressing. But Tearlaments mirror match was crazy af
I haven’t played the TCG in nearly 20 years, but have played some Duel Links and I sometimes play Speed Duel now. All the searching and hyper hyper hyper consistency is one of the main things about modern Yugioh that’s preventing me from getting back into the TCG. One of the things I liked about playing back in the day (and even now with Speed Duel) is “making do with what I had” as opposed to starting the game with a specific end board in mind, and if I can’t get turn one, then might as well scoop. Flesh and Blood is my main TCG now. Of my two main heroes, one is a searcher/combo hero and the other does absolutely no searching or combos. Unless it’s a rare super-bricky hand, I’m always able to play with my non-searcher hero because the cards aren’t designed to require specific cards. Even with my combo hero, search and combo effects are conditional, so I can still play without having or searching for specific cards. Of course they’re not the most optimal moves, but there are ways to play and make moves and do attacks without requiring hyper consistency. Even with my friend who I got into Flesh and Blood, her hero also doesn’t search. Of course there are better and worse hands, but less-than-ideal hands still work regardless as they’re not so dependent on other cards. To me as largely an outsider, it seems like the “issue” is that Yugioh is designed to get a specific monster out asap. That’s the specific goal and the cards are designed to achieve that goal. Not that’s necessarily a bad thing, but back in the DM era if essentially every duel I was getting out a Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon turn one and my opening hand was designed to do that, that would get boring pretty fast. Joshua Schmidt has described the first couple of turns where players are building their boards as just let the set up and after that is when “Yugioh” actually starts.
Conversely, "making do with what I had" was one of the biggest frustration points for me with playground and early yugioh, because "what I had" was often not really playable. It led to stall cards becoming chase and tedious games, because you needed to survive long enough to draw into something usable. Pretty much the minimum satisfying consistency is season 1 GX Elemental Heroes level consistency, where you weren't always summoning the perfect fusion, but you were always fusing something. And that's still a pretty high level of consistency. For one, it means always having a polymerisation when you need it.
@@yurisei6732 Sure. But I think a difference between playing now versus playing as a kid is being able to have better control of what your deck is. Not saying that you need to have meta staples at $50/copy, but being able to get singles as opposed to whatever random thing you got in a pack. If, and this is a big if, Yugioh (which format?) is fundamentally designed so that cards are so fundamentally dependent on other cards and players can’t play the game unless they have like 3 specific cards in order to play the one “good” card, then that seems like an underlying game design problem to me. I haven’t played the TCG in almost 20 years and only just to Speed Duel now, so my opinion doesn’t really matter. Currently players, despite things that even they would consider flaws, like the game overall and that’s perfectly fine. From what I’ve seen of other formats like Edison, there isn’t searching and the hyper consistency of modern Yugioh, but individual cards still have (for lack of a better term) use and value as the overall strategy isn’t to get the boss monster out and have an unbreakable board on turn one. If the goal is to get the boss monster and unbreakable, then anything less than that may be seen as “pointless” because of that high bar. Without that high bar, it allows for individual cards to have more value and use because they don’t need to be “good for” only one thing that needs to be done consistently. Bug or feature? Just getting back to Flesh and Blood as it’s the only other TCG I’ve really played, even with my budget, non-combo/searcher deck, every card is basically playable on its own and every hand I draw lets me do stuff even if it’s not the most optimal hand. If I opened a bunch of random packs to get the minimum cards for a deck, would there be bricking issues, sure, but unlike when I was a kid on the playground, I can get singles and even netdeck so it’s not a completely unusable deck, but there’s still no searching involved. The options aren’t “hyper-consistent searching or the game is unplayable.” Even when I last played the TCG in 2006, I would have an occasional search card, same now with Speed Duel, but since the game plan wasn’t/isn’t “get boss monster and unbreakable board turn 1” that hyper consistency wasn’t necessary and a more straightforward “get some monsters out and gradually lower each others’ LP” that personally I prefer.
I miss bricking. Deck building games have risks. That's how they work. Digimon, Pokemon, Magic, Slay the Spire, it's all risk. Nothing is more fun than figuring out what can be done with a hand.
Bricking was absolutely terrible. Especially as the risk was functionally if your opponent also didn't brick they would be way ahead to the point it's better to scoop game 2 hope you open okay that time.
at this part, a completely nuts part of me is tempted to just say go absolutely bonkers and let people start every duel with a specific card in hand; just ensure absolute maximum consistency for every deck this is again, completely nuts, and I suspect strong decks will remain incredibly dominating (and this might result in a chance of them getting even stronger if I'm honest), but if every deck is hyper-consistent from the start, they can at least attempt to compete with each other vs only getting to even try to start your game plan once every five duels
What I have noticed about Yu-Gi-Oh is that the average deck sizes are smaller compared to other TCGs. Which in turn causes effects such as Searching, Card Draw, Excavation, or effects that can stack the deck in your favor become some of the most problematic pieces in the game. Decks such as Adamancipator could become problematic in the future if given more support pieces.
Low deck size doesn't make searchers stronger, it makes them weaker, by increasing the chance that you've already drawn what you would search. What makes searchers overpowering in Yugioh is the lack of resource system, that means a searcher in hand is exactly as good as drawing the card you'd want to search - sometimes even better. In MTG for comparison, a turn that consists of tutoring a combo piece and then playing the searched card is going to cost a couple more mana than if you hard drew it.
Smaller decks means outside of searching every other method Is worse. As you play cards you lose more and more shots to hit something useful. Adamancipator in its current form has to quite literally be all gas with no means for defensive options or even the ability to use spells in some builds because of how bad excavation can be vs just search to hand
@@yurisei6732 Low deck sizes help card searching effects. This is especially true if that card belongs to a monster that is apart of an archetype say (Snake Eyes or Lab). Its even more effective if that deck has good recursion and is able to get it's searcher out more consistently.
@@kingokaze When you search for a card, you look at your entire deck to find it. Having a lower deck size has absolutely zero impact on that except to make the subsequent shuffling easier. ROTA finds the same card whether your deck has 5 cards or 500 cards.
@@GG_Nowa While excavating can be hot garbage at times, all it takes is for a deck to have a high degree of interaction to turn something bad into something broken. Adamancipator might not have been the best example of what "good" excavation can look like. However any small deck that can make use of card effects that reorganize deck order in your favor will always be busted. Also, card draw is arguably one of YGOs most busted mechanic. In games like YGO the deeper you dig into your deck the more your chances for winning or drawing outs increase.
Consistency is a bit of a double edged sword. You want consistency in a deck to get the most out of it, making sure you can always get to your strongest cards, but it also ends up making decks and matches feel same-y. No matter the hand you just end up doing the same couple of combo lines and making the same end board. There is no more fun in the "what hand will I get" part because you're going to be getting to the same destination anyway. The concept of working with what you have is gone now, and to me that takes away just a bit of the fun.
Powercreep hasn't gone far enough. Where are my 0 card combos Komoney? Where is my generic Spellbook of Judgement? Where is my archetype that can summon itself facedown from the banished zone?
I've played Yu-Gi-Oh for two decades, but the generic goodstuff cards and hand traps made me switch over to Magic the Gathering. Nothing makes me feel more like playing a Yu-Gi-Oh villain than a fully on theme tribal commander deck.
Variance is what sets TCGs apart from many other kinds of games, but balance is needed. Too little consistency and the game feels random. Too much makes the game boring very fast. The last few formats have felt like setting up a board game with extra steps than a card game. It's like going to a casino, nut instead of gambling, they just take your money and kick you out.
With the power level the game is at and every deck beeing able to otk easily, consistency is neccessary so you don't instantly die. The problem with hadtraps you mentioned is not a consistency problem, but a one card combo problem. If any two cards in a deck would guarantee full combo, I'm still super consistent, but would have to run more engine cards so i have a high chance to open at least two engine cards. On the other hand if they insist on giving these decks a one card starter, they could print restrictions on them, so we don't get the mathmech kinda decks where you run 3 of the starter and then every semi-decent card that seaches said starter. Like Cannot be added from deck to hand or can only be added by "Archytypal monster that requires you expend some resources".
Ultra Consistent Decks are definitely annoying to play against. Ishizu Tear and Snake Eye are the main culprit of this. It seems like hand trapping them just is just useless sine even their less optimal plays still get them to somewhat the same end board or slightly weaker.
Haven't watched the video but I'll give my take on the question. Yes and No that YGO decks being really consistent is good. Yes as it allows less RNG to a game that cannot escape it which gives more opportunity for more strategies, builds and accessibility to decks and archetypes. An example would be Fusion. While I will miss the days where most fusions required very specific monsters to fuse with Polymerization, I will always love that archetypes that center around fusion can "fuse" with different other fusion archetypes like "Chimera + Branded" or "Tearlaments + Dark Worlds" that compliments each others gimmicks and strategies. It also gives more space for non-engines which can either be extenders to make decks more consistent or allows hand traps and staples. Additionally, it gives modern archetypes a bit of future proofing as some can just slap their favourite modern archetypes onto the new cards and see if they work (an example would be "Fiendsmith (currently only in OCG) + Yubel". No. It boils down to three things, power creep, deck diversity and card prices. I personally think that Power Creep in any game is good for its health just as long as its handled well and doesn't overshadow most (if not) ALL strategies (An example would be Tearlaments format where nothing was worth playing except Tear-Ishizu and NOW Snake-Eyes). YGO making modern decks more consistent allows for more options for 1-card combos that end with so many interruptions that's its hard to play around with. Even then, more consistency allows for more non-engines/staples to be added to any deck. Imagine a Snake-Eye mirror match and one of the payers drew 4 handtraps with one Snake-Eyes Ash and the other player drew 4 engines with one hand trap. That duel will be miserable to watch and play for everyone. By having too much consistency in ANY archetype, staples and non-engines will flood deck diversity where the duel is decided on who drew the out. Card prices is a bit harder to argue with but to put it simply, this point connects to power creep. If decks keep getting TOO consistent, then some archetypes become unplayable for most players as they are currently the best and most engine cards for those archetypes become extremely pricey. An example would be Snake-Eye (from one google search, a PURE Snake-Eye deck with 20 non-engine cards in the main deck is $550+)
Anything is bad when it's taken to excess, and the consistency of a deck is no different. Everyone knows that a deck that lacks consistency is bad, mostly because it can't get it's own gameplan rolling and accomplish anything productive. A deck that has too much consistency ends up being samey and boring to play, with every match going more or less the same way with you rarely if ever having to think about the plays you're making or improvising a workable board in the face of proper disruption. Both extremes are bad, the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.
Yugioh is what happens when you only tell the players “yes”. It “fixes” the problems with other card games by making decks that do everything and do it efficiently. I think it kills flavor.
Consistency is fine, and I don't know how we'd ever change that. Horus, Snake Eye, and Fire Kings combos play out the same each time. They are scary consistent--but what if I go first, have board, and Shifter them? Paul, I'm requesting your opinion on a related topic: power level of Normal monsters The power level of Normal monsters is still low. What if Blue eyes was 4000 ATK? Monsters feel like a means to an end now. Konami could reboot and make us care about the simple cards again, and give them the power boost they deserve. I'm still getting my feet under me as a returning player, so I don't know if scaling them up would work... but I can't stop thinking about it. 4 stars 1800-2500 ATK 5-6 stars 2700-3500 ATK 7-8 stars 3600-4300 ATK etc. Or something like that? Cheers for the great vid!
This was a topic of popular discussion years ago within the online community and the consensus was that a level 4 normal monster would need about 5000 ATK to be playable without support (and nothing could make a level 5+ normal monster playable). The basic problem is that ATK is low value in a world with so much protection, recursion, and quick-effect removal. The best-case scenario for a vanilla is that it swings in, destroys one monster and inflicts some damage. But that only happens if nothing prevents its existence, nothing prevents its attack, nothing prevents its target being destroyed, and the target isn't in defense position. A normal monster can do nothing to prevent any of those things occuring. A normal monster is a pure beatstick, and the many beatstick monsters that exist now all bring something more to the table than a normal monster ever could - even if that's as simple as being a link monster and therefore 100% consistent.
@@yurisei6732 thanks for the reply! I'm just grasping at ideas to make sense of the game. At the end of the day it's... game-brakingly complicated. How can I introduce new players when the skill ceiling is so high? Nibiru is the best, but I can still play it at the wrong time. Ash is also the best, and I should usually stop the first search, but sometimes the second? The list goes on. But other games have that we don't: simplicity. Both Magic and Pokemon keep it simple to keep players on track. Beat sticks plus flavour are often enough 😓
Because of how aggressive and unforgiving is Yugioh, you cannot have a mediocre hand or just pass turn hoping for a card that could fix your hand like in other cards games, because you won't have another turn (or if you do, you won't be able to navigate your way out most of the time) so I do really understand how consistency and having a good play turn one is key in the game. I don't have a problem with consistency perse, the problem I have is that most ultra-consistent decks are pretty streamline, you get to one card and you do the same plays every game, even if you get handtraped, you don't pivot into other line, you just play an extender and continue like nothing or just pass. It's kind of boring to being honest (and I'm playing Spright in MD, which falls into this). But back into the topic. I feel like most people have this issue because power and consistency are both high, instead of one being higher and the other lower. And that it's feels pretty forced by Konami, as in picking a favorite child and not caring in not disguising or being subtle about it. At least that's my impression by reading people complains. Speaking of picking favorites. Konami, if your REALLY think that accessing the Fiendsmith engine with the new underworld link-2 is fine and balanced, then that would mean that you can and should release Knightmare Mermaid out of the banlist without any kind of errata right? RIGHT?!
Just wanna say I have two ways to reach Razen for Vanquish souls that I like atm. Rokket calibur + Rokket Quick launch. They can make Dempsey and they can summon borger from hand. Just because you mentioned VS. Lol
I think monsters having two effects and no more is the best way. Too many monsters can do multiple things in one turn every turn and it’s super broken. All the decks I play only ever have two effects and neither are ever both quick effects. It’s one quick effect on field and one effect in grave and that’s it.
An overall rule change to how search works could help. Make all searches excavates ala Digimon or limit the amount you can do per turn. Ofc that'd never happen.
I probably don’t share the same frustrations as everyone else that’s been consistently playing for quite a while, but I recently got back into playing, and it can be really discouraging when the person you’re playing goes first and has a 15 minute turn of special summoning, link summoning, and filling up the entire board with stuff that I just can’t deal with on my turn unless I draw something that can help (unless it gets negated lol). It’d be nice if it would at least take them more than 1-2 turns to do that so I’ve got time to set something up. And since when does everything have a negate ability? 😭😭
Yes. The inconsistency of decks promoted variance from game to game. To spike players, that is awful to say, since they look for the most consistency at the highest rank of play. But variance is what gives the new player an incentive to come back, since "no game is the same" you want to play as much a possible.
Something else to think about is the primary reason why decks like Snake-Eye break the game on release isn't necessarily the amount of non-engine they run. Its the fact that we have cards like Caesar and Apallousa. Any time a ridiculously powerful boss monster becomes to generic or cards like Apallousa is made its almost always the decks like Snake--Eyes that take advantage of it the most. I'm not saying that the game is bad. But if Konami took cards like these that do to much to stop people from playing the game it would fix the game and revolutionize the way we think about YU-GI-OH and 1 card combos. Instead of making the best deck leagues above everything else they should make it powerful enough to make people say that its the strongest and rely more on the consumer to love the game enough to keep buying their products. Is it not the duty of game companies to produce and support products that people will enjoy. Konami is nothing without us. They need to trust us so that we can trust them. People need to remind businesses that without customers that they don't have a business. They are people just like us and everyone is equal regardless of fame and/or fortune. Even if the owner started out rich someone in their family became rich and they inherited their riches and if the owner and their company earned it they should know where they came from. Maybe what I said is a bit harsh but tell that to people Konami gave a option to pay over $1,000 for the best decks and all because they haven't chosen to future proof the game from cards like Apallousa and Caesar yet. Why is it that people have to keep telling Konami not just as producers of card games but as game producers in general what their job is. Decks are already very strong and we need cards like Phantom of Yubel to balance Nibiru. But we don't need cards like Baronne, Savage Dragon, Apallousa, and Caesar. Its cool to be able to mix and match cards and and win in style. But it isn't cool when we have decks that have easy access to these broken cards. I don't think its all Snake-Eyes fault. They aren't necessarily poorly designed its over the top boss monsters they can use and people may not agree that Apallousa and Caesar need to go but remember this. There will probably be another combo deck thats roughly as effective as Snake-Eyes and when that happens if Apallousa and Caesar or The Fiendsmith isn't banned instead of Ceasar or if The Fiendsmith isn't limited and Lacramosa gets banned history will repeat itself over and over again until something is done about Apallousa and Caesar.
Im a casual player but it seems like theres no out playing or out thinking your opponent these days no thinking or planning on the fly no deciding or planning when to play a card no back and forth its just you win on your first or second turn or you lose i don't know if that makes any sense lol
Change the game from a 40-60 card deck limit to a solid 50 or 60 card deck requirement like all other card games. More cards means less consistency, but also means more creative choices of what to run in decks to make up the card count, plus it means everyone is playing with the same number of main deck cards which creates a bit more fairness and balance.
You're just gonna see every deck run either small world and targets with more hand traps (something people don't want decks on more of) or decks like branded that don't care as they're already on 50-60
A deck being consistent isn't really a problem, the problem is generally the power level of an archetype not it's consistency. Also a deck being consistent is separate from the 1 card combos/hand traps issue. Decks like branded are consistent, but can't really run hand traps. So when it comes to snake eye, each of those 1 card starters result in a massive card advantage, meaning the rest of your cards can be hand traps. But other decks can be consistent but require 2+ cards to combo, resulting in less card advantage and less space for non engine like hand traps. Without generic extra deck staples, snake eye would be consistent but not very strong, since it would just end on flamberge or something, since none of the current snake eye monsters are particular good end board pieces. But as it stands, snake eye is the most consistent deck when it comes to accessing generic extra deck staples. If you want to end on apollousa and IP masquerena, there's no point playing anything else other than snake eye. The other issue with snake eye is the fact that those same cards also allow infinite recursion, whereas most other decks have almost no grind game in comparison. Every card is recyclable in a snake eye deck, so even if you completely clear the board, they can recover everything with one card like original sinful spoils. That is once again related more to one card combos though since snake eyes can win a game by top decking one ash, whereas any other deck probably needs more than one card to get started again.
It seems pretty obvious to me that to have a healthy game the more powerful strategies have to be less consistent than the less powerful strategies are. If you have 1 deck that is the most powerful and the most consistent there is no reason to ever play anything else and you end up with a tier zero format.
Consistency isn't an issue. The issue is when cards are poplar esque effect's where it 3 things. Look at modern edision. Absolutely hyper consistent decks but nothing is solo holding decks up
I don't think consistency is an issue. The issue begins in the card economy of your consistent combo (if its a one card combo or not) and also what kind of board is trying to accomplish (Snake-Eye Ash is a one card combo totally different from Marincess Blue tang)
The thing is that all these consistency's end point, where how many combos and what is the end board looks like. Is great that consistency is always reliable but the point of annoyance I believe is with the multi negates or too many interruptions. Every time I go back in Yugioh I felt terrible that I can not do anything with my hand and getting a free win because my opponent bricked. If we get more bricky or inconsistency in our game a mulligan would be good to have. Like how Cardfight Vanguard did with you put cards you do not want to see in the bottom of your deck and draw on top by the amount you returned.
I think consistency is fine where it’s at. But cards like poplar having 3 effects is getting to be to much. When your deck is half or over half hand traps it feels kinda bad.
My favourite cards involve dice. The game veing this consistent makes it boring. But how can it not be this consistent given how easy it's to search and the existence of 1 card combos
Excuse the echoey audio, guys! The relatives' house obviously isn't treated for recording videos! 😅
You mean Caleb house?😂
Every archetype needs a "Toon Table of Contents" with a hard archetype/summon lock for a set condition (turn, hand size, GY size, etc.). Like how you have "fusion Deployment" for fusion decks, but it locks you to only fusion summon. Just make it fit the theme. Like How "Dark Magician" has "Soul Servant"; it does like the "Toon" card, but can work around things like "Ash Blossom" if played right. Another method would be a means for a archetype-specific spell/trap placer from deck. Again, like how "DM" has "Magician's Salvation".
The next big thing would be a limit on archetypes used in deck during tournaments. Like 2 per deck unless the cards specifically mention others like how "Stardust", "Synchron", "Warrior", and "Junk" all have cards that lists each other. Series like the "Solemn" cards would be fine to have more than one of in deck. I know if Project Ignis can have the cards available for search and have their archetypes, then Konomi can as well; especially since you have to first register your deck. You can just upload it to their site, and it will automatically let you know.
Additional thoughts if the deck is very consistent it should also have a much weaker power level, you shouldn't be able end on unbreakable or lock out boards.
conversely, I think the idea of choosing to make your deck a little less consistent for potentially increased power or utility is interesting as a deck building decision
true. one example is flower cardians. I would say this deck is very consistent but you spend 20 minutes comboing to end up on the worst endboard bro has ever seen
@@starjadiancloneinvestigato1772
Yeah it's alot of effort for a minor reward kinda like pure dark world some of those end boards are pure jank
Like Gadgets back then
I like that, but the way Yugioh is set up now everything’s got to be better than the last.
Yugioh has reached a point where it seems like any sense of chance has been removed when it comes to a deck's efficiency.
I think that's good. It's not fun to play a non game. I think linearity is more so the problem, it gets repetitive.
@@babaG819Absolutely, the problem is how modern starters flow into the same combo lines. I want to consistently open playable, but I also want to have a cool "ah ha" moment when I find a new line. Seeing the same thing over and over is lame.
chance is a frustrating thing in a card game but that is arguably wrong, more emphasis has been put on chance due to needing to draw handtraps
Players want this. There's even an advocacy for only a handful of decks to be played, some even enjoying the tier zero because they don't want to take risks(facing decks they are unprepped for) even in deckbuilding. "Skillful", yeah right.
@@jccesista2167 I've heard this argument in goat format lol, "we need less players to play rogue decks to the chaos mirror is more skillful" "I've spent 1000s of hours practicing the mirror, rogue decks ruin my practice". Like, just play Chess, or Go, or Shogi, or an actual game that's always the same.
Power creep has gone way too far.
Convince Konami to make less consistent decks, then convince players to buy them. This is why we got what we got.
The suship has sailed. You can never go back to the restaurant.
Yugioh has had formats before where the meta deck got banned out and the one that replaced it was weaker, it's entirely possible to do that again. The problem is all the money you'd lose as you pulled the competitive tier back in line with lower tiers - there's no value to Konami in creating a format where existing decks are competitive without expensive new cards. So from a financial perspective, you'd need an alternate format to do this, like Rush but less ungabunga.
The actual issue I think that's here is that, yugioh has had "consistent" decks for a very long time now. Cards that search each other and the like. But for even the best consistent decks of the past, you sacrificed for that consistency, usually power, being able to otk, and the such.
But now every deck has the ability to patch up those weaknesses, usually with generic good stuff. Constant access to otk tools, backrow removal and the like generally means a deck being hyper consistent also has the ability to just win more.
This is why Snake Eyes is so good right now. All the stuff they make outside of Flamberge is mostly just generic good stuff, because it's the best thing you can be doing. And with all of the "Poplar" effects we're getting for archetypes, this consistency is just where we're going in yugioh.
I see consistency as a bad thing after a certain point because Yu-Gi-Oh is not even a card game anymore. I am not saying it has to be based purely on luck or anything, but it has to have the element of chance, and thinking on the fly if you don't get the cards you want.
if I were a card designer at Konami 20 years ago, I would have made every single searcher an excavate. For example ROTA would be excavate the top 10 cards of your deck to pick a valid warrior or whatever.
Introduces consistency while keeping luck as part of the game otherwise it becomes less about who is the better player and more about who has the better deck. Some decks already play themselves with how linear they are
@@starjadiancloneinvestigato1772Making everything an excavator would also reduce all that shuffling you need to do during the game 😅 Digimon does that really well, I don't think you look through your deck at any time, you only excavate and then put at the bottom. That's at least how it was when I played
@@starjadiancloneinvestigato1772 Just ensure the non-chosen card goes to the bottom in any order. We know how dangerous milling 5 can be, let alone 9.
This man cannot escape YuGiOh even at his relative's place.
YGO is life
It’s his job
Consistency 😂
You don't stop being a duelist just because you're in a different location!
@@Luchi_HTXgood one 🤣
uhh it would be good if they could balance consitency and how good they are
Consistency is the worse kind of powercreep, it homogenizes deck building ,it enables toxic 18-20 hand trap metas, it rapidly escalates card design into 1 card combos that search, extend and provide GY utility. Decks like snake eyes should exist because they leave very little openings and weaknesses.
Cards that provide consistency should have either drawbacks, be a risk to play for the fear of being interrupted or limit the endboard with archetypal locks.
Having inconsistent decks would also make people fall back and have to rely on other strategies such as backrows or sub optimal tech.
We really can not keep going like this how far will we have to go to say enough is enough decks are too complex and they are too explosive in their combo lines.
There's an important distinction between consistency and compaction. Compaction requires consistency, but not all consistent decks are compact. You tend to get compaction when the starter cards are the same as the extender cards or the finisher cards, but you can also achieve consistency with these cards separate, by increasing the number of pure starters. Eg, Witchcraft can have 15 starters, but the starters don't do anything except find the finishers, and both require a healthy supply of in-archetype spell cards do use their effects.
And for the record, starters should have severe locks (although not entirely archetypal, especially for normal summon starters), extenders should have downsides. If the starters have the downsides, Ash still shuts down all decks.
@@yurisei6732starters being normal summons only would help.
Honestly, what I want out of Yugioh is for both players to be able to play. Remember those times? Those were good times. But now it’s like whoever wins the die roll and goes first gets to set up whatever board they want, usually generic good stuff disruption, and then they win because their opponent only opened 1 of their 3 Ash Blossoms. Or maybe they did get interrupted more than once, but the hyper recursion and “our turn” mechanics that modern decks seem to have meant that they still had enough disruption available to them that their opponent wasn’t actually able to do anything.
We need an official format like heart of the card where you're only allowed 1 copy instead of 3
not as good as you think it is. master duel had a limit 1 event and what do you think happened? 99% of players were doing tearlaments kashtira.
Going from 3 to 1 hurts lower tier decks more than upper tier decks because the upper tier decks only need 1 starter card out of the opening hand of 5
So we play tear kash then.
Might as well gamble on high rolling
If you do that Tearlaments Kashtira and Snake-Eyes stay as strong as they are right now.
The hyper-fixation on turn 1 in Yu-Gi-Oh! has basically necessitated decks be uber consistent. When you have a 40 card deck but only the first 5 cards you see actually matter, anything less than 85% consistency (no this isn't an arbitrary number, it's the exact % of opening a starter when you have 12 copies in a deck which competitive players have committed to memory at this point) is almost unviable in a competitive setting. Because if you don't open playable, you've basically just lost the game at that point without even being able to do anything.
For me stuff like exosisters and s force line up with the modern cards that can combo but you can still have fun category
Powerful but fair decks. Yeah they play D Shift but in shit formats like this something has to even the playing field. Which is why D Shifter needs to stay with all these insane Graveyard reliant decks.
Exo and S-Force are at least interesting to play but not so oppressive no one wants to play against them (and have a fair chance winning. Which happe doesn't against Snake Eyes, which damn near auto loss.)
The more consistent a deck is, the less variety the duels featuring it have. An extremely consistent deck might have 5 duels in a row that are 95% exactly the same, outside of whatever the opponents did. Less consistency is better, but still having some. Moderation is key. The same thing every time gets stale and loses any fun, even if it wins.
As for off-archetype cards being used in certain decks, it really depends on the card and situation. Elborz (the Simorgh field spell) can be really solid in decks like Mist Valley, and the Cyber Dragon spell you mentioned can be great for other light/machine decks, but I feel it's a problem if the card starts becoming more associated with the other deck than its originally intended home. One that comes to mind is Galaxy Soldier being spammed to death for an easy CyDra Infinity.
The game will never be fixed, people will either complain that they brick and lose to RNG or complain that everything is consistent and lose to RNG. The only way Yugioh can be fixed is with a hard reboot which no one is going to do.
You can say that rush duel is a reboot for the game
Goat format baby, game was always about flip monsters and attack and defends position. Bring back the fundamentals of resource management.
So, Rush Duels/Speed Duels.
The hard reboot has a name is called Rush duel.
@@CarbonTaxLOL goat format is just now chaos in every deck meaning resource management isn't really a thing now as the resource is stack the gy
Yugioh is suffering from Success! It's become so good at what it does that it killed the fun.
When you can access literally any card in your deck at any time that's a problem. It results in combos that go into boards of negations, floodgates, and even hand traps. It speeds up the game to a point where it will end in 2 turns max at any time. By speed I'm not talking literally since the turns take longer because of all of the combos. I'm talking about speed in terms of number of turns.
At this point there should be a turn timer now to force players to play more simpler/straight forward combos and draw out games longer. This would also help in drawing out the main end board you’re trying to make over a couple turns instead of one
Consistency has never been the issue, the issue is toxic endboards.
Consistency is good but the problem is when it’s also paired with a high power level ceiling
The limit for me is when the consistency of an archetype is designed to ensure you can get to your most powerful end board.
End board power and variety should depend on your deck building decisions, the deck you're up against, the cards you've drawn, and your skill in execution. I think we should have enough consistency to make /an end board with some interaction/ with any given hand, but never a board of stacked omninegates or copious amounts of pluses and resource recursion.
Well it's kinda annoying, you are then forced to open exceptionally well also. You have to then play a deck that is capable of matching it, it just pushes old strategy's out faster.
But hey that's just my opinion
I like to think of there being two types of consistency: linear consistency and varied consistency.
Linear consistency is your deck being theoretically able to get to the very same play pattern or the very same optimal combo every game.
Varied consistency is your deck being able to open at least playable every game but your lines or the monsters you summon are very different because of maybe you opening different engines or something like that.
Bricking aka one player not being able to play is always undesirable. Linear consistency however is also bad because it makes games against a certain deck feel samey. Varied consistency I'd consider the sweet spot.
A very simple example for varied consistency would be Quick Draw in Edison format. You can open Lonefire and go into Tytannial backed up by a bunch of backrow. Or you can open Quickdraw Dandy, make Drill Warrior and start grinding. Same deck but very different openings.
This is exactly the right way to look at it. A deck should almost always do something fun on its turn, but shouldn't always do the exact same fun thing in the exact same way.
Consistency is the main draw people have toward Yugioh, so it is a good thing, but the things that decks can "Consistently" end on or get to should be weaker or less oppressive, hard stop. Great video Paul.
Remember when searchers had restrictions like hero or destiny signal, or costs for their activation like one for one or were traps instead of quick play spell cards? Or as Paul said, random draw cards that sometimes shuffled stuff back into the deck which meant possibly you could still brick
The thing with an archetype working with unintended cards is because of accidents, not intended, but what KONAMI can clearly do is control the releases of searchers that make their archetype broken. That is what they can do, to slow down with the hyper consistency.
I think it's either internal consistency or engine mashup these days. That way you dont have to draw the precise starter, but you're likely to draw one of many. See how Kashtira and Adventure get splashed. I think what's bad is the quality and quantity with consistency. You end up with more cards and they're disruptive as First turn player.
Also, "searching your deck for a card" is now done so often, there are many windows to Ash blossom. Some are more optimal than others. The problem is this requires meta knowledge and not necessarily the game state. It makes it very hard to break down why and when you should Ash Blossom a card. If you were explaining this to a new comer, its just not friendly.
Consistency is great overall, the problem is more the output of what a deck can do that is the problem. Speedroids are fairly consistent, but they only really do one or two things and that's about it, they have serious choke points that are reliably exploited by standard hand traps. Earth Machines are relatively consistent, but again they have choke points and are fairly insular. Then we get to lore archetypes of late and they're fairly splash able with many other archetypes, allowing them to shore up weak points.
people overly bashing genex in past was the reason why we get all these extremely super consistent "LORE" deck
@@abdurachmanromzy4778 I disagree with this take, Genex had a lot of searchers and for their time were relatively consistent. The issues they suffered from were pay offs and a lack of cohesion to really tie things together. They were arguably more consistent than any of the OG Duel Terminals archetypes save for X-Sabers. They certainly had their fair share of monsters appear in meta or powerful decks, more than can be said for most of Duel Terminal and the lore cards that predates Duel Terminal.
Consistency and effective pay offs really came to prominence with Nekroz and Qliphorts. From there things snowballed.
Consistency and one card combos should really be for decks with a lower ceiling. A counterpoint I sometimes hear is that Konami needs to make decks busted in order to sell product, and that's just a moot point. You only need a deck that is arguably one of the best decks in the format to sell product, not a deck that leads to a tier 0 format. Every tier 0 deck in modern YGO could have been designed more carefully right from the start so that they would be around a tier 1 power level. This is where I think lowering the consistency from a design standpoint for these decks would help make them less oppressive.
Design is hard in a game that's already this efficient. You can intend for a deck to be tier 1, and make something that's only a small tweak away from being tier 0 and tier 3 - and remember that "the meta" is about what people are using, not what's strictly the best, so a deck doesn't have to be a blow-out winner to become a tier 0 deck, it just has to be enough better than the other options that running anything else might be giving away a win one in every ten games. Konami won't be making tier 0 archetypes deliberately, they'll just be erring on the side of ensuring that a new deck is desirable because designing only a little weaker could tank sales.
Consistency is not an issue, the problem is with hyper consistency where you always can go full combo cuz your deck has multiple ways to get to the starter. And then getting hand trapped doesn’t really do anything.
When even Nibiru can’t weaken an end board that much it’s so discouraging 🥲 the decks I like get destroyed by the rock
havent finished the video yet but i always think its interesting how old old cards seemed to be independent and always do something on their own, while newer cards need to combo to get them to work, causing alot of bricking, and now the newest cards dont even need to combo they just need to search for the 1 card that does it all lol
Snake eye having access to wanted, diabellstar, sinful spoils, bonfire, snake eye ash and poplar themselves is where I say it's too much.
Consistency is one thing but playing the same exact game over and over again gets overly tedious. I can’t ever bring myself to play something like Snake-Eyes because I’ll get bored after so long of pulling off the exact same combo line with very slight variations leading to the same result. I’ve realized a long time ago when it comes to card games there has to be some kind of essence of chance involved to make it exciting. With the way Yugioh currently is it’s very much what you see is exactly what you get. Now there are a lot of people who do like the consistency has now and that’s ok but as for me it gets stale after a while. I’ve been setting up a Duel Night with my friends similar to Team Sam’s version and have been having a blast with it drafting LOB decks because every move while simple feels impactful vs my modern decks where I’m just on autopilot mindlessly playing cards to reach the same end result over and over. The consistency that the game follows now definitely feels like it’s trying to feed into the competitive aspect more and more and again that’s fine but for the most part I just want to play with my friends or occasionally at a locals sometimes. The only way for it to be “fixed” for those who miss the old way in my belief is to hard reboot, and those who say rush duels are missing the point, when we say hard reboot we mean scrap the current game and make the same game with the monsters we like but Konami just do a better job keeping card designs simple and fun. Now I know that won’t happen but that’s all just my take on it.
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As a magic and now ex yugioh player there is certainly a consistency problem with yugioh.
It really feels like going first means one of 3 things. You win, you get countered, or you bricked.
yugoh's at the point where it NEEDS to slow down to give both players turns to draw cards, as it is now hyper consistency is rewarded because you need to open your combo turn 1 or you just lose, if the game was slowed down so it lasted a few more turns, then less consistent but still powerful decks could potentially see play, then there could also be an interesting dynamic of explosive turn 1 decks vs decks that need time to ramp up
2 turn duels. No thanks
Honestly, I miss when consistent decks had a weakness of being less strong overall. Monsters really should not have 3+ effects on them .-.
Goodbye Relinquished then
I don't mind hyper consistency, if it wasn't YGO. In other card games, consistency can be traded for overall power, so as long as there is a trade-off it can be balanced. However, in YGO consistency nearly always combos into very powerful cards, meaning you get to have your cake and eat it too, most of the time.
Variance is not a bug, it's a feature.
Consistency in a vacuum is good, the problem is when high consistency coincides with small packages or high recursion. Lots of access to starters is nice since it results in less swinginess and fewer dead hands, but if every starter is also an extender and a floater and removal and protection, that's too much. For example, Witchcraft can run functionally 15 starters, but that's fine because they still need to run 5-8 main-deck power cards and maybe 10 spell cards, which means that the highly consistent build doesn't have space for many engines or handtraps.
There's an interesting lesser-mentioned problem here too - when a deck has too many searchers, you get to a point where you have nothing left worth searching. That's probably a useful measure for when a deck has become too consistent.
I definitely prefer the way Digimon does searching by revealing the top X cards and pick something based on archetype instead of being able to just look for a specific card. It almost defeats the purpose of having a deck in the first place when you can just pick and choose which cards you have in hand
I don't necessarily mind high consistency. But I think an issue arises when your starters are also extenders. It's just infinite gas then.
“Todays video is going to be a little bit different” - Paul
Just a little bit though
@@apsamplifier joking with ya. Love your show and all of the APS crew
Games like Duel Masters and Digimon actively avoids direct searching. The best they have is Excavate a number of cards on top of your deck and you add the card(s) that fit that criteria. And yes you can whiff/miss but it encourages you to fill your deck with those themed cards and nothing or little else.
And Rush Duel has no Search cards at all, their way of "searching" is to fill the graveyard with mass mill cards and use Graveyard recover cards to get the pieces that they want.
I was going to mention Digimon. The lack of true tutor/searcher cards is part of what keeps the game from being stupid.
The most powerful decks should need Small World to be consistent.
The question of consistency can be answered, on a personal level, by a hypothetical alternate format: if you did not draw cards, but chose them from the deck, would you like the game more or less? You choose your opening hand and if you activate a draw card, you choose exactly what cards you draw, if you mill cards, you choose what cards to mill.
Complete consistency, zero RNG. Do you load up on gas in your opening hand, or disruption, knowing you can always get your starter on your draw? Do you run specific search cards, or fulfill the requirements for draw cards to increase your card advantage? Do you run multiple copies of your starters in case one gets negated or do you run multiple engines and extenders to create more layered combos?
I couldn't tell you what would actually be better, but I feel that it seems like it would take a lot of the fun out of the idea of playing Yugioh. As such, I also dislike consistency as a power creep angle - I enjoy variance in a card game.
Yugioh in general is a bit too consistent but that's not necessarily a bad thing unless there are specific archetypes which do it best - fiendsmith, white woods, snake eyes, etc
Consistency is the enemy of fun
Consistency really has removed the life from this game. Having tools that can help start a combo is one thing, but for one card to do enough to create a whole end board is insane. Variance is yugiohs greatest strength, regardless of what any "pro" may have to say.
Variance is fun in a Match up spread.
Having to return to 2016 where monarch would routinely wait for you to finish your turn draw then say game 2 and hope they open better next time isn't fun variance for either side.
Tbh top tier decks are ok if Konami buffs the older archetypes aswell.
@@DTSK371 I would really like more Gravekeepers. I somehow beat Snake-Eyes 2/3 times with them, going first and second. They do have some legitimately insane cards, it’s just that they’re slow. Their searchers are awful, monster effects are horribly weak. Trap cards are okay to bad, and their in archetype boss monsters are laughable. I want more extra deck and a retrain on a lot of the monsters. Some serve their purpose perfectly like Commandant, Heretic, Spiritualist, and recruiter. Their spells are actually pretty good, no changes there. I don’t want a SuperHeavy Samurai speed Gravekeepers, I just want their Archetype to not be stuck in 2009. Ending with 2-3 Gravekeepers, Necrovalley, and a spell or trap would be enough. No massive card advantage, just give a board that can’t be disintegrated instantly without spamming Solemn cards.
I think that one possible "solution" to some of these issues modern yugioh is going through in regards to extreme levels of consistency for most meta decks would be to change some of the ruling regarding Main Deck and Extra Deck sizes. Like if we changed the min. main deck size to 60 and the max. to 80 and lower Extra Deck size to just 10, this should significantly lower the consistency of almost all decks by default and force players to pick very carefully what they play in their extra deck. The ED under this hypothetical can no longer function as a catch all toolbox for all situation and players would be steered to playing a more main deck play style with more tech cards.
Heyy I think this would actually fix the game, it would make too much searching redundant if you already got all your search targets, make decks more versatile
So, you want MtG with no mana and a 10 card companion zone?
@@MiguelMartinon I have never played MTG so i dont know how close my suggestion is to its rules. This was just an idea i had while brainstorming ways to improve the game. Its not a one and done solution to yugioh's and certainly not a silver bullet.
You're making magic but worse so we've returned to goat format
@@GG_Nowa not really. 60 card decks are still ultra consistent thanks to calculators mathing out the required statistics. All his rules are is Combo Winter featuring 10 companions.
Not a great idea.
Great video!
For yugioh 2.0
1. Exclusive Alternate art for master duel only. End of a season which ever top two decks were played the most get an alternative art for their boss monster or primary spell card.
2. Rematch option
3. Ability to see your opponents timer
4. More gems if your able to win the duel within 100 seconds (not excluding connection fails)
5. Highlight text in different colors that indicate the effect is to negate, special summon, destroy, banish, draw/search
>more gems if you win in 100 seconds
I love having games devolve into accescode otk exactly as the norm rather than push people off that to promote lower to the ground decks
With the exception of floodgates Branded is the perfect example of what decks with 3 or more 1 card starters should look like. Unless you build it that way you generally don't get more than 2 of 3 monsters per turn. Mirrorjade is important to because it keeps your opponent from cheesing out a win that when they go first that can come from trading blows equally until the person going first wins. In smaller boards cards like Mirrorjade can be super important to break stalemates.
Now that someone mentioned a few videos ago the videos are usually slightly different. We have expanded now the LOCATION is slightly different! HYPE!!!
I am fine with consistency whether it would be for new archetypes or new support for old archetypes as long as there is a restriction and I am not just talking about paying life for cost, discard for cost etc etc. I want new archetypes to have an EXTRA Deck restriction or even main deck/hand special summoning restrictions.
For example Floowandereeze is a balanced archetype (minus the non engine like Shifter of course), because if you activate the smaller monster's effects, you cannot SS from your ED.
Red Dragon Archfiend/Resonator archetype is balanced as well because it locks to Dark Dragon Synchros.
Ragnaraika locks you to Plant/Insect/Reptile.
etc etc
I don't really like the power creep of consistent 1-card combos that we have been moving into. Yugioh has always been balanced by the idea that there are plenty of ridiculous, unfair, broken things you can do, but you can not do them consistently, so they don't see play outside of gimmick decks. But recently we have had more and more decks that can provide the end board of a 2-3 card "inconsistent" combo off a single starter. And yeah, the ability for those decks to just play 15+ hand traps because of all the consistency they have is pretty annoying for the format as well, it just shuts out rogue options and turns higher level play into trading hand traps sometimes. I'm not against 1-card combos as a concept, but the way yugioh has moved it sort of feels too sacky, where so many decks just win if they draw it or lose if they don't, rather than it simply enhancing their end board or something if they draw it.
I think a pretty good solution to this has been changing decks to have hyper consistency with severe restrictions. Purrely basically can't have a hard brick, but it needs to discard its cards to actually get there and therefore gets punished really hard by disruption. Runick is the same thing, every spell can equal their combo but they have harsh restrictions that prevent them being too splashable of an engine. Genex now allows any genex name to become full combo for them. Even sky striker to a degree has many ways to turn various cards into their end goal
Consistency is fine. Just what is done with or towards it is the problem. The handtrap wars against Snake Eyes is pretty depressing. But Tearlaments mirror match was crazy af
I haven’t played the TCG in nearly 20 years, but have played some Duel Links and I sometimes play Speed Duel now.
All the searching and hyper hyper hyper consistency is one of the main things about modern Yugioh that’s preventing me from getting back into the TCG. One of the things I liked about playing back in the day (and even now with Speed Duel) is “making do with what I had” as opposed to starting the game with a specific end board in mind, and if I can’t get turn one, then might as well scoop.
Flesh and Blood is my main TCG now. Of my two main heroes, one is a searcher/combo hero and the other does absolutely no searching or combos. Unless it’s a rare super-bricky hand, I’m always able to play with my non-searcher hero because the cards aren’t designed to require specific cards. Even with my combo hero, search and combo effects are conditional, so I can still play without having or searching for specific cards. Of course they’re not the most optimal moves, but there are ways to play and make moves and do attacks without requiring hyper consistency.
Even with my friend who I got into Flesh and Blood, her hero also doesn’t search. Of course there are better and worse hands, but less-than-ideal hands still work regardless as they’re not so dependent on other cards.
To me as largely an outsider, it seems like the “issue” is that Yugioh is designed to get a specific monster out asap. That’s the specific goal and the cards are designed to achieve that goal. Not that’s necessarily a bad thing, but back in the DM era if essentially every duel I was getting out a Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon turn one and my opening hand was designed to do that, that would get boring pretty fast. Joshua Schmidt has described the first couple of turns where players are building their boards as just let the set up and after that is when “Yugioh” actually starts.
Conversely, "making do with what I had" was one of the biggest frustration points for me with playground and early yugioh, because "what I had" was often not really playable. It led to stall cards becoming chase and tedious games, because you needed to survive long enough to draw into something usable. Pretty much the minimum satisfying consistency is season 1 GX Elemental Heroes level consistency, where you weren't always summoning the perfect fusion, but you were always fusing something. And that's still a pretty high level of consistency. For one, it means always having a polymerisation when you need it.
@@yurisei6732 Sure. But I think a difference between playing now versus playing as a kid is being able to have better control of what your deck is. Not saying that you need to have meta staples at $50/copy, but being able to get singles as opposed to whatever random thing you got in a pack.
If, and this is a big if, Yugioh (which format?) is fundamentally designed so that cards are so fundamentally dependent on other cards and players can’t play the game unless they have like 3 specific cards in order to play the one “good” card, then that seems like an underlying game design problem to me. I haven’t played the TCG in almost 20 years and only just to Speed Duel now, so my opinion doesn’t really matter. Currently players, despite things that even they would consider flaws, like the game overall and that’s perfectly fine.
From what I’ve seen of other formats like Edison, there isn’t searching and the hyper consistency of modern Yugioh, but individual cards still have (for lack of a better term) use and value as the overall strategy isn’t to get the boss monster out and have an unbreakable board on turn one. If the goal is to get the boss monster and unbreakable, then anything less than that may be seen as “pointless” because of that high bar. Without that high bar, it allows for individual cards to have more value and use because they don’t need to be “good for” only one thing that needs to be done consistently. Bug or feature?
Just getting back to Flesh and Blood as it’s the only other TCG I’ve really played, even with my budget, non-combo/searcher deck, every card is basically playable on its own and every hand I draw lets me do stuff even if it’s not the most optimal hand. If I opened a bunch of random packs to get the minimum cards for a deck, would there be bricking issues, sure, but unlike when I was a kid on the playground, I can get singles and even netdeck so it’s not a completely unusable deck, but there’s still no searching involved. The options aren’t “hyper-consistent searching or the game is unplayable.”
Even when I last played the TCG in 2006, I would have an occasional search card, same now with Speed Duel, but since the game plan wasn’t/isn’t “get boss monster and unbreakable board turn 1” that hyper consistency wasn’t necessary and a more straightforward “get some monsters out and gradually lower each others’ LP” that personally I prefer.
I miss bricking. Deck building games have risks. That's how they work. Digimon, Pokemon, Magic, Slay the Spire, it's all risk. Nothing is more fun than figuring out what can be done with a hand.
Bricking was absolutely terrible.
Especially as the risk was functionally if your opponent also didn't brick they would be way ahead to the point it's better to scoop game 2 hope you open okay that time.
Consistency isnt the problem its the power level.
The real problem is the only problem in ygo ...its truly amazing when its balanced
I just want me to start releasing a bunch of normal monsters and continue releasing normal monsters support because it’s honestly so cool to see
at this part, a completely nuts part of me is tempted to just say go absolutely bonkers and let people start every duel with a specific card in hand; just ensure absolute maximum consistency for every deck
this is again, completely nuts, and I suspect strong decks will remain incredibly dominating (and this might result in a chance of them getting even stronger if I'm honest), but if every deck is hyper-consistent from the start, they can at least attempt to compete with each other vs only getting to even try to start your game plan once every five duels
What I have noticed about Yu-Gi-Oh is that the average deck sizes are smaller compared to other TCGs. Which in turn causes effects such as Searching, Card Draw, Excavation, or effects that can stack the deck in your favor become some of the most problematic pieces in the game. Decks such as Adamancipator could become problematic in the future if given more support pieces.
Low deck size doesn't make searchers stronger, it makes them weaker, by increasing the chance that you've already drawn what you would search. What makes searchers overpowering in Yugioh is the lack of resource system, that means a searcher in hand is exactly as good as drawing the card you'd want to search - sometimes even better. In MTG for comparison, a turn that consists of tutoring a combo piece and then playing the searched card is going to cost a couple more mana than if you hard drew it.
Smaller decks means outside of searching every other method Is worse.
As you play cards you lose more and more shots to hit something useful.
Adamancipator in its current form has to quite literally be all gas with no means for defensive options or even the ability to use spells in some builds because of how bad excavation can be vs just search to hand
@@yurisei6732 Low deck sizes help card searching effects. This is especially true if that card belongs to a monster that is apart of an archetype say (Snake Eyes or Lab). Its even more effective if that deck has good recursion and is able to get it's searcher out more consistently.
@@kingokaze When you search for a card, you look at your entire deck to find it. Having a lower deck size has absolutely zero impact on that except to make the subsequent shuffling easier. ROTA finds the same card whether your deck has 5 cards or 500 cards.
@@GG_Nowa While excavating can be hot garbage at times, all it takes is for a deck to have a high degree of interaction to turn something bad into something broken. Adamancipator might not have been the best example of what "good" excavation can look like.
However any small deck that can make use of card effects that reorganize deck order in your favor will always be busted.
Also, card draw is arguably one of YGOs most busted mechanic. In games like YGO the deeper you dig into your deck the more your chances for winning or drawing outs increase.
Consistency is a bit of a double edged sword. You want consistency in a deck to get the most out of it, making sure you can always get to your strongest cards, but it also ends up making decks and matches feel same-y. No matter the hand you just end up doing the same couple of combo lines and making the same end board. There is no more fun in the "what hand will I get" part because you're going to be getting to the same destination anyway. The concept of working with what you have is gone now, and to me that takes away just a bit of the fun.
Powercreep hasn't gone far enough.
Where are my 0 card combos Komoney? Where is my generic Spellbook of Judgement? Where is my archetype that can summon itself facedown from the banished zone?
I've played Yu-Gi-Oh for two decades, but the generic goodstuff cards and hand traps made me switch over to Magic the Gathering.
Nothing makes me feel more like playing a Yu-Gi-Oh villain than a fully on theme tribal commander deck.
Variance is what sets TCGs apart from many other kinds of games, but balance is needed.
Too little consistency and the game feels random. Too much makes the game boring very fast.
The last few formats have felt like setting up a board game with extra steps than a card game. It's like going to a casino, nut instead of gambling, they just take your money and kick you out.
With the power level the game is at and every deck beeing able to otk easily, consistency is neccessary so you don't instantly die. The problem with hadtraps you mentioned is not a consistency problem, but a one card combo problem. If any two cards in a deck would guarantee full combo, I'm still super consistent, but would have to run more engine cards so i have a high chance to open at least two engine cards. On the other hand if they insist on giving these decks a one card starter, they could print restrictions on them, so we don't get the mathmech kinda decks where you run 3 of the starter and then every semi-decent card that seaches said starter. Like Cannot be added from deck to hand or can only be added by "Archytypal monster that requires you expend some resources".
Ultra Consistent Decks are definitely annoying to play against. Ishizu Tear and Snake Eye are the main culprit of this. It seems like hand trapping them just is just useless sine even their less optimal plays still get them to somewhat the same end board or slightly weaker.
Great video 👍
Haven't watched the video but I'll give my take on the question. Yes and No that YGO decks being really consistent is good.
Yes as it allows less RNG to a game that cannot escape it which gives more opportunity for more strategies, builds and accessibility to decks and archetypes. An example would be Fusion. While I will miss the days where most fusions required very specific monsters to fuse with Polymerization, I will always love that archetypes that center around fusion can "fuse" with different other fusion archetypes like "Chimera + Branded" or "Tearlaments + Dark Worlds" that compliments each others gimmicks and strategies. It also gives more space for non-engines which can either be extenders to make decks more consistent or allows hand traps and staples. Additionally, it gives modern archetypes a bit of future proofing as some can just slap their favourite modern archetypes onto the new cards and see if they work (an example would be "Fiendsmith (currently only in OCG) + Yubel".
No. It boils down to three things, power creep, deck diversity and card prices. I personally think that Power Creep in any game is good for its health just as long as its handled well and doesn't overshadow most (if not) ALL strategies (An example would be Tearlaments format where nothing was worth playing except Tear-Ishizu and NOW Snake-Eyes). YGO making modern decks more consistent allows for more options for 1-card combos that end with so many interruptions that's its hard to play around with. Even then, more consistency allows for more non-engines/staples to be added to any deck. Imagine a Snake-Eye mirror match and one of the payers drew 4 handtraps with one Snake-Eyes Ash and the other player drew 4 engines with one hand trap. That duel will be miserable to watch and play for everyone. By having too much consistency in ANY archetype, staples and non-engines will flood deck diversity where the duel is decided on who drew the out.
Card prices is a bit harder to argue with but to put it simply, this point connects to power creep. If decks keep getting TOO consistent, then some archetypes become unplayable for most players as they are currently the best and most engine cards for those archetypes become extremely pricey. An example would be Snake-Eye (from one google search, a PURE Snake-Eye deck with 20 non-engine cards in the main deck is $550+)
Anything is bad when it's taken to excess, and the consistency of a deck is no different. Everyone knows that a deck that lacks consistency is bad, mostly because it can't get it's own gameplan rolling and accomplish anything productive. A deck that has too much consistency ends up being samey and boring to play, with every match going more or less the same way with you rarely if ever having to think about the plays you're making or improvising a workable board in the face of proper disruption. Both extremes are bad, the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.
konami made the sweetspots archetype with the abilty to play floodgates without hindering themselves 100% since 2020
Yugioh is what happens when you only tell the players “yes”. It “fixes” the problems with other card games by making decks that do everything and do it efficiently. I think it kills flavor.
Consistency is fine, and I don't know how we'd ever change that.
Horus, Snake Eye, and Fire Kings combos play out the same each time. They are scary consistent--but what if I go first, have board, and Shifter them?
Paul, I'm requesting your opinion on a related topic: power level of Normal monsters
The power level of Normal monsters is still low. What if Blue eyes was 4000 ATK? Monsters feel like a means to an end now. Konami could reboot and make us care about the simple cards again, and give them the power boost they deserve.
I'm still getting my feet under me as a returning player, so I don't know if scaling them up would work... but I can't stop thinking about it.
4 stars 1800-2500 ATK
5-6 stars 2700-3500 ATK
7-8 stars 3600-4300 ATK
etc.
Or something like that?
Cheers for the great vid!
This was a topic of popular discussion years ago within the online community and the consensus was that a level 4 normal monster would need about 5000 ATK to be playable without support (and nothing could make a level 5+ normal monster playable). The basic problem is that ATK is low value in a world with so much protection, recursion, and quick-effect removal. The best-case scenario for a vanilla is that it swings in, destroys one monster and inflicts some damage. But that only happens if nothing prevents its existence, nothing prevents its attack, nothing prevents its target being destroyed, and the target isn't in defense position. A normal monster can do nothing to prevent any of those things occuring.
A normal monster is a pure beatstick, and the many beatstick monsters that exist now all bring something more to the table than a normal monster ever could - even if that's as simple as being a link monster and therefore 100% consistent.
@@yurisei6732 thanks for the reply! I'm just grasping at ideas to make sense of the game. At the end of the day it's... game-brakingly complicated.
How can I introduce new players when the skill ceiling is so high? Nibiru is the best, but I can still play it at the wrong time. Ash is also the best, and I should usually stop the first search, but sometimes the second? The list goes on.
But other games have that we don't: simplicity.
Both Magic and Pokemon keep it simple to keep players on track. Beat sticks plus flavour are often enough 😓
Because of how aggressive and unforgiving is Yugioh, you cannot have a mediocre hand or just pass turn hoping for a card that could fix your hand like in other cards games, because you won't have another turn (or if you do, you won't be able to navigate your way out most of the time) so I do really understand how consistency and having a good play turn one is key in the game.
I don't have a problem with consistency perse, the problem I have is that most ultra-consistent decks are pretty streamline, you get to one card and you do the same plays every game, even if you get handtraped, you don't pivot into other line, you just play an extender and continue like nothing or just pass. It's kind of boring to being honest (and I'm playing Spright in MD, which falls into this).
But back into the topic. I feel like most people have this issue because power and consistency are both high, instead of one being higher and the other lower. And that it's feels pretty forced by Konami, as in picking a favorite child and not caring in not disguising or being subtle about it. At least that's my impression by reading people complains.
Speaking of picking favorites. Konami, if your REALLY think that accessing the Fiendsmith engine with the new underworld link-2 is fine and balanced, then that would mean that you can and should release Knightmare Mermaid out of the banlist without any kind of errata right? RIGHT?!
Just wanna say I have two ways to reach Razen for Vanquish souls that I like atm.
Rokket calibur + Rokket Quick launch.
They can make Dempsey and they can summon borger from hand.
Just because you mentioned VS. Lol
I think monsters having two effects and no more is the best way. Too many monsters can do multiple things in one turn every turn and it’s super broken. All the decks I play only ever have two effects and neither are ever both quick effects. It’s one quick effect on field and one effect in grave and that’s it.
An overall rule change to how search works could help. Make all searches excavates ala Digimon or limit the amount you can do per turn.
Ofc that'd never happen.
Can’t go back now
Short and sweet answer, yes. Also, nice thumbnail 👌🏼
In Floo, you’re running like, 6-9 copies of Robina but last time I played it on Master Duel I didn’t see it at all, lol
I probably don’t share the same frustrations as everyone else that’s been consistently playing for quite a while, but I recently got back into playing, and it can be really discouraging when the person you’re playing goes first and has a 15 minute turn of special summoning, link summoning, and filling up the entire board with stuff that I just can’t deal with on my turn unless I draw something that can help (unless it gets negated lol). It’d be nice if it would at least take them more than 1-2 turns to do that so I’ve got time to set something up. And since when does everything have a negate ability? 😭😭
Yes. The inconsistency of decks promoted variance from game to game. To spike players, that is awful to say, since they look for the most consistency at the highest rank of play. But variance is what gives the new player an incentive to come back, since "no game is the same" you want to play as much a possible.
Something else to think about is the primary reason why decks like Snake-Eye break the game on release isn't necessarily the amount of non-engine they run. Its the fact that we have cards like Caesar and Apallousa. Any time a ridiculously powerful boss monster becomes to generic or cards like Apallousa is made its almost always the decks like Snake--Eyes that take advantage of it the most. I'm not saying that the game is bad. But if Konami took cards like these that do to much to stop people from playing the game it would fix the game and revolutionize the way we think about YU-GI-OH and 1 card combos. Instead of making the best deck leagues above everything else they should make it powerful enough to make people say that its the strongest and rely more on the consumer to love the game enough to keep buying their products. Is it not the duty of game companies to produce and support products that people will enjoy. Konami is nothing without us. They need to trust us so that we can trust them. People need to remind businesses that without customers that they don't have a business. They are people just like us and everyone is equal regardless of fame and/or fortune. Even if the owner started out rich someone in their family became rich and they inherited their riches and if the owner and their company earned it they should know where they came from. Maybe what I said is a bit harsh but tell that to people Konami gave a option to pay over $1,000 for the best decks and all because they haven't chosen to future proof the game from cards like Apallousa and Caesar yet. Why is it that people have to keep telling Konami not just as producers of card games but as game producers in general what their job is. Decks are already very strong and we need cards like Phantom of Yubel to balance Nibiru. But we don't need cards like Baronne, Savage Dragon, Apallousa, and Caesar. Its cool to be able to mix and match cards and and win in style. But it isn't cool when we have decks that have easy access to these broken cards. I don't think its all Snake-Eyes fault. They aren't necessarily poorly designed its over the top boss monsters they can use and people may not agree that Apallousa and Caesar need to go but remember this. There will probably be another combo deck thats roughly as effective as Snake-Eyes and when that happens if Apallousa and Caesar or The Fiendsmith isn't banned instead of Ceasar or if The Fiendsmith isn't limited and Lacramosa gets banned history will repeat itself over and over again until something is done about Apallousa and Caesar.
Im a casual player but it seems like theres no out playing or out thinking your opponent these days no thinking or planning on the fly no deciding or planning when to play a card no back and forth its just you win on your first or second turn or you lose i don't know if that makes any sense lol
I don't hate the idea of decks not bricking as much, but I do hate it when decks that do have a brick history don't get a proper update to fix that.
I proudly main rush duels now
Change the game from a 40-60 card deck limit to a solid 50 or 60 card deck requirement like all other card games. More cards means less consistency, but also means more creative choices of what to run in decks to make up the card count, plus it means everyone is playing with the same number of main deck cards which creates a bit more fairness and balance.
You're just gonna see every deck run either small world and targets with more hand traps (something people don't want decks on more of) or decks like branded that don't care as they're already on 50-60
A deck being consistent isn't really a problem, the problem is generally the power level of an archetype not it's consistency. Also a deck being consistent is separate from the 1 card combos/hand traps issue. Decks like branded are consistent, but can't really run hand traps.
So when it comes to snake eye, each of those 1 card starters result in a massive card advantage, meaning the rest of your cards can be hand traps. But other decks can be consistent but require 2+ cards to combo, resulting in less card advantage and less space for non engine like hand traps.
Without generic extra deck staples, snake eye would be consistent but not very strong, since it would just end on flamberge or something, since none of the current snake eye monsters are particular good end board pieces. But as it stands, snake eye is the most consistent deck when it comes to accessing generic extra deck staples. If you want to end on apollousa and IP masquerena, there's no point playing anything else other than snake eye.
The other issue with snake eye is the fact that those same cards also allow infinite recursion, whereas most other decks have almost no grind game in comparison. Every card is recyclable in a snake eye deck, so even if you completely clear the board, they can recover everything with one card like original sinful spoils. That is once again related more to one card combos though since snake eyes can win a game by top decking one ash, whereas any other deck probably needs more than one card to get started again.
It seems pretty obvious to me that to have a healthy game the more powerful strategies have to be less consistent than the less powerful strategies are. If you have 1 deck that is the most powerful and the most consistent there is no reason to ever play anything else and you end up with a tier zero format.
Consistency isn't an issue.
The issue is when cards are poplar esque effect's where it 3 things.
Look at modern edision. Absolutely hyper consistent decks but nothing is solo holding decks up
I find consistent decks become boring to play very quickly, since you're often using the same cards every single game.
I don't think consistency is an issue. The issue begins in the card economy of your consistent combo (if its a one card combo or not) and also what kind of board is trying to accomplish (Snake-Eye Ash is a one card combo totally different from Marincess Blue tang)
The thing is that all these consistency's end point, where how many combos and what is the end board looks like.
Is great that consistency is always reliable but the point of annoyance I believe is with the multi negates or too many interruptions.
Every time I go back in Yugioh I felt terrible that I can not do anything with my hand and getting a free win because my opponent bricked. If we get more bricky or inconsistency in our game a mulligan would be good to have. Like how Cardfight Vanguard did with you put cards you do not want to see in the bottom of your deck and draw on top by the amount you returned.
A true skill test would be to let everyone pick their hands and pick their draws. That would be a true test of skill format.
Irrelevant archtype support that dosnt allow the deck to compete with the meta is predatory.
I think consistency is fine where it’s at. But cards like poplar having 3 effects is getting to be to much. When your deck is half or over half hand traps it feels kinda bad.
Yu-Gi-Oh decks are very consistent - except for any of the ones I like. Bricking, being completely boned from one Ash Blossom hit... oof.
Same lol. Would love a paleozoic specific search card that doesn't have the hefty cost of trap trick/trap tracks
My favourite cards involve dice. The game veing this consistent makes it boring. But how can it not be this consistent given how easy it's to search and the existence of 1 card combos